


Memory and Time

by Emma



Series: The Homecoming Universe [12]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-16
Packaged: 2017-11-21 08:05:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 23,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/595413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emma/pseuds/Emma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something or someone is attacking Jack's timeline...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

            The year she turned ten, Toshiko Gwendolyn Cooper-Williams got a very special gift from her uncle Jack: a trip to the Horsehead Nebula to see stars being born. They traveled in a wonderful machine called a TARDIS belonging to Uncle Jack’s friend, the Doctor. The sheer, utter awesomeness of standing in the TARDIS observation deck, watching huge disks of burning gas spinning themselves into suns while uncle Jack and the Doctor told her stories about their travels together – in his younger days uncle Jack had been one of the Doctor’s Companions – was almost eclipsed by the shocking joy of finding the TARDIS inside her head.  
  
             It was a person, not a machine, and it told her other stories, about a brave man who spent multiple lives saving the Universe. It showed her other companions besides Uncle Jack: Aunt Martha, and Rose Tyler (Toshi had seen a picture on her on Uncle Jack’s desk), and a red-headed lady called Donna Noble, and a young girl called Ace, and a boy called Adric. Even her friend Sarah Elizabeth’s grandmother, Mrs. Smith, had been a Companion. And TARDIS showed her how all the Companions loved the Doctor but never stayed and how the Doctor grew increasingly more lonely with each passing year. And Toshi looked at the tall, lanky man with the manic gestures and the sweet smile, and fell in love.

             TARDIS did another thing: it showed her the Vortex. Toshi never told anyone about that. TARDIS pointed out that, considering his history with people who could see and touch the Vortex, Uncle Jack was likely to freak out and go all overprotective on her and it would be a cold day in Hell before she saw the Doctor or TARDIS again. Toshi might be young, but she had never been foolish. Now that she had seen her future, she wasn’t going to do anything to jeopardise it.

             Once her brother Yan let the cat out of the bag, she did admit she wanted to be a Companion. Most everyone thought it was cute, although uncle Ianto was overheard explaining to uncle Jack and her mother, in his most reasonable tone of voice, that children often daydreamed of adventure as they grew up and they should have fits about it when it actually happened. The only one who took her seriously was Aunt Martha, who looked into her eyes for a long time, then kissed her forehead and whispered _I think you will be very good for him._

             Armed with her blessing, Toshi set herself to learning everything she could to become a proper Companion. By the time she was nineteen she was a competent computer jockey, even by Torchwood standards (uncle John), fluent in five languages, including Intergalactic Trade Patois and Roxicoricofallapatorian (uncle Jack and aunt Tish), a fair-to-middling medic for a number of species (aunt Martha and uncle Tom), a good shot (uncle Jack), and a skilled dirty-trick brawler (uncle Andy). She could even make coffee and tea to uncle Ianto’s exacting standards.

             The next time she saw the Doctor was at Pryce and Addie’s engagement party. She managed to get him alone and made her pitch.      

             He laughed at her. Coldly and with surgical precision, he enumerated her failings. Then, as if to rub salt in her wounds, he very publicly invited her friend Sara Elizabeth Smith to travel with him.

             That night, Toshi cried herself to sleep. In the morning, she waited until her mother had left for work – her Mum was capable of hunting the Doctor down like a Weevil if she thought he had hurt one of her children – and poured her heart out to her father. Rhys simply hugged her.

             “Got your heart broken, did you, cariad? I know you don’t want to hear this now, but it happens to everyone. Even your uncle Captain Hero has had his share of heartache. Much of it from the same source, come to think of it.”

             “What am I going to do, Tad?”

             “Live. Move on. Put all those things you learned to use. I hear your aunt Tish is looking for an intern in the artifacts department of the labs.”

             “Uncle Jack would never hire me.”

             “Oh, I don’t know. If I were you I’d make noises about UNIT’s new NATO liaison program. With all your skills, you’d be a natural.”

             Two weeks later, she reported to Torchwood’s research labs in London. She worked hard and played even harder. Two years later she was sent to Italy to study archeology with Isabella Branciforte. Besides teaching Toshi all about locating alien artifacts using archeological methods, Isabella took her under her wing in all matters not-Torchwood, like fashion and culture. Toshi threw herself wholeheartedly into her new life, and if sometimes late at night, when she was exhausted past her ability to shield, she noticed a beautiful fiery cascade of time-and-space currents beckoning to her, she ignored it.

             At the end of her internship she requested permanent assignment to Torchwood Italy. Uncle Jack told her he would consider it in one condition: that she come home for her twenty-fifth birthday.

             Which was why she was at the parking-garage entrance to the Hub when the TARDIS materialized, door open and cloister bell clanging fit to wake the dead, to make an ungraceful landing in an empty space between one of the SUVs and uncle John’s 1956 Austin Healy.

             Toshi didn’t even wait for the blue box to stop rocking before she ran in, weapon drawn (one of the benefits of hitching a ride on an UNIT transport was avoiding all those pesky metal detectors). The control room reeked of decaying vegetation, but there wasn’t as much as a leaf in sight. In fact, everything seemed exactly as she had seen it fourteen years before.

             Except for the Doctor.

             He lay crumpled against one of the room’s supporting ribs. His clothes were shredded and singed. Blood dripped from his torso and pooled beneath his legs. Toshi pressed her fingers beneath his ear; there as a pulse, weak but steady. She left him and moved over to the console. During what she had taken to calling her “obsession time,” she had learned everything she could about TARDIS, including basic maintenance and security procedures. Everything seemed to be in order, but she initiated a deep scan, just in case.

             “Toshiko?”

             The weak call had her rushing back to him. “Doctor, what happened?”

             He grabbed at her arm. “Find Jack.  Make him… do you know him? Do you know who Jack is?”

             “What? Of course I do. Doctor, are you…” She heard running outside. “Uncle Jack! In here!”

             He rushed in, followed by Jonas McGee, Torchwood Three’s gadget man. One look and he was barking orders into his comm. “Lizzie, get down here. The Doc is hurt. Gwen, send out a general alert. If something is chasing the Doc I want it located and tracked before it hits the Oort cloud. John, same for the Rift.”

             His eyes unfocused briefly, and Toshi was not surprised to see uncle Ianto materializing by one of the supports. He moved directly to the console and ran his hands over the main panel.

            “She’s undamaged, Jack, but she’s really upset about something. Won’t tell me what yet. Wants to see everyone in the conference room.” They traded a long look. “ I’ll go ahead and set it up.”

            He faded out. Toshi heard Jonas give a long sigh. She smiled at him.

            “Hard to get used to?”

             He shook his head. “Try impossible. Every time I see it I get goose bumps.”

             Lizzie Smith –  Sarah Elizabeth Smith, Torchwood Three’s medical officer – entered the TARDIS at her usual gallop. Toshi stood and moved aside to allow her to work on the Doctor.

             “Princess?”

             Impulsively she threw her arms around the captain. “I missed you. All of you.”

             “We did too, princess.” He gave her a hard hug then disengaged gently. “Report, agent Cooper-Williams.”

             “Yes, sir. I was at the garage entrance when TARDIS materialized. The door was open and I could hear the cloister bell. I ran in, gun drawn. I found the Doctor. I checked his pulse. It was weak but steady. I initiated TARDIS security scans. At that point the Doctor regained consciousness. He recognized me, but seemed disoriented.”

             “How?”

             “He kept asking me if I remembered you.” She shrugged. “Then I heard you running outside. That’s it.”

             “Critique your performance.”

             The crisp, even tone reminded her that he was not only her beloved uncle, but also the head of Torchwood, her ultimate superior, and someone who didn’t suffer fools at all. She took a deep breath and organized her thoughts.

             “I blew it, sir. I should have communicated with the officer on duty immediately, passed on the intel, and awaited instructions. I was lured into a false sense of security by my perceived familiarity with the TARDIS.” She met his eyes squarely. “It won’t happen again.”

             “See that it doesn’t.” He turned away. “Lizzie?”

             The doctor and McGee were lifting the Time Lord up.  Jack waved Lizzie out of the way and took over on her side.

             “Let’s get him to the infirmary, boss. It’s actually much better than it looks. He’ll be all right, but he’s lost a fair bit of blood. Mostly he needs rest.”

             “Do we know what attacked him?’

             “Specifically? No.  But from the direction, angle, and shape of the wounds I’d say something with five-to-eight inch razor-sharp claws that attacks from above.” She took one look at Jack’s face and swallowed hard. “You know what it is.”

             “I think so. Although what the hell he is doing tangling with them… Toshi?”

             “Yes, sir.”

             “Toshi, Toshi,” the Doctor’s eyes were open and he had what could only be called a goofy smile on his face. “Pretty Toshiko. Stay with me.”

             He sank back into unconsciousness, leaving a scarlet-faced Toshi to face the others. McGee and Lizzie were valiantly struggling to control their laughter. Jack’s reaction was simply a long speculative look.

             “You heard the man, Toshi. You’ve been elected bodyguard. No arguments,” he warned, shutting off the impending stream. “One other thing. Did you smell anything when you first entered the TARDIS?”

             “Rotting flowers. Like when you leave a bouquet in water for too long.”

             “I was afraid of that.’ He looked at the Time Lord hanging limply in his grasp. “You and I are going to have a long talk about this one, old friend. A very long talk.”


	2. Chapter 2

          After making sure the Doctor was settled down in the infirmary with Toshi standing guard, Jack headed for the conference room. It had been sheer luck he had been in Cardiff at all. For the past twelve years, at the direct command of the King, he had been executive director of Torchwood, dividing his time between London and Cardiff and making frequent visits to Scotland, Italy, and the new satellite facility in Bermuda. Not that the commute was difficult. Ianto liked to use the trips to get in what he called his “time and space target practice.” Jack could recall several mornings spent pleasurably in bed when he still got to his breakfast meeting with time to spare.

          He started up the stairs automatically before he remembered that Gwen had moved the conference room to one of the largest storage bays; with Torchwood Three at full strength, they had needed more space. The old conference room was now John’s domain, where he and mainframe worked their magic. The new one was half-meeting-half-war room and all Gwen. There were biscuits and sugary drinks on the sideboard and above it a blowup of a CCTV shot showing Ianto, Toshiko, and Gwen battling it out in a ferocious game of Scrabble while Owen and Jack stood around harassing them. Jack remembered that day vividly. It had been Toshiko’s birthday, a few weeks after he had returned to Cardiff, and it had been the first time he had felt truly welcomed back by the team as a whole.

          “You all look very happy.” Andy had come to stand behind him. “Gwen laughed and cried when we found it.”

          “We were. It was a perfect day.” He turned away from the photo, blinking back tears, and threw his arm over Andy’s shoulders. “So, skinny, how are the kids?”

          Andy accepted the change of subject with a smile. “Little Jack left for rugby camp this morning. Marty is off to London with Tish.”

          "I still say you should have found better names for them than Jack and Martha.”

          “Oh, pipe down. Nobody asked your opinion.” The former policeman pointed at the head of the table. “Sit down, Captain. I’ll go start the coffee.”

          People had been drifting in, and there were grins on many faces as they witnessed the exchange. Everyone knew Jack had moved mountains to help Andy and his partners conceive and was insufferably proud of the results.

          Ianto walked in arm in arm with Gwen. The difference between them startled Jack every time he saw them together, even though intellectually he understood what was happening. Chronologically, they were two years apart, but now Gwen could pass for Ianto’s mother. Not that she had aged badly; in her mid-fifties, she still had the beauty and vivacity that had attracted him so many years before, but it had mellowed into a matronly elegance. Of course, she could still strip the hide off an errant subaltern at sixty paces, but now she did it without raising her voice. To the younger generation of Torchwood, Jack was “the Captain,” but she was “M” – a combination of Judy Dench’s legendary character in the James Bond films, and “mum” – and they prayed every night never to screw up so badly as to attract her personal attention.

          Once they had all settled into their accustomed places, Jack noticed there was an empty chair to Ianto’s right. He gave his partner a questioning look. Ianto shrugged.

          “She wishes to speak to us directly.”

          As he spoke the air over the empty chair seemed to shimmer, then, suddenly, she was there. Jack nearly swallowed his tongue. It was Donna Noble, and yet it wasn’t. She had been distilled and refined, becoming a creature of the Vortex, as alien as a haemavore or a Time Lord. He wondered in dismay if Ianto would ultimately become something as regal, beautiful, and distant as she was.

          *Don’t be daft.* Her “voice” was still very much Donna. *Everyone changes, even you. Doesn’t mean we grow apart.*

          *Miss you, Red.*

          *Why? I’m always here. Just reach.*

          Jack grinned. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Doctor’s TARDIS. Or he is her Doctor. The jury’s still out on that one. So what happened, Red?”

          “He decided he wanted to spend some time studying gamma bursts in the Agya Boundary.” She rolled her eyes. “He’s always getting mad fancies like that. We were halfway there when we got an SOS from a planetary system in the outskirts of what used to be Gallifreyan space. Whoever it was used the old Gallifreyan command code, so of course we went to investigate. Middle of nowhere, I’ll have you know. Seven-planet system, with only one that could support anything higher in the food chain than an amoeba. The habitable one was no prize, either. Highly eccentric orbit, made it hotter than the Sahara over most of the planet and colder than the innermost circle of Dante’s hell at the poles. There was a single human settlement in a little peninsula sticking out like Italy into the only body of water larger than a puddle.”

          Jack, who at the beginning of the speech had been in his usual slouch, chin on hand, was now sitting rigidly straight. “What the hell were you doing in the Boeshane, Red?”

          “We didn’t know we were there, Jack. All we knew is that we had landed in the middle of some kind of attack. The Doctor identified the attackers as being related to Reapers.”

          “Reapers?”

          She waved her hand and all the monitors in the room showed a nightmarish creature resembling a winged scorpion, with multiple limbs and a fanged mouth in the middle of their chest.

          “Reapers are Time’s garbage men. They clean up paradoxes.”

          “That’s not what attacked us,” Jack said.

          “No. This was.”

          Another image appeared. This time the creature had no chest mouth, and the multiple limbs were gone. Instead, the beak, the wing struts, and the sting at the end of the tail had become knife-sharp and lined with rows of serrated teeth, and two massive human arms ended in clawed fingers. The only sound in the appalled silence was a long string of Welsh curses from Andy.

          “He jumped in, of course,” TARDIS continued her tale. “When hasn’t he? He managed to avoid the creatures and get to the settlement. I was… surprised. It was so easy, almost as if they were ignoring him. And there was something so familiar about it… Then I remembered. One night, soon after he joined us, Jack had a nightmare. I could not wake him by normal means, so I entered his mind. I saw what happened to him when he was a child. And once I remembered, I knew.”

          She looked at Jack, and he was shocked to see tears running down her face. “If he had succeeded, your future as it exists would have disappeared. I followed as many probability lines as I could, and they all ended in disaster. So I called the Doctor back. I told him he had to let the monsters do their worst.”

          Jack felt encased in ice. The logical, adult part of him understood her reasoning, but the child who had lost father and brother couldn’t accept it. Blindly he reached out and found Ianto’s hand. His lover took his in a fierce, loving grip, sending wordless reassurance and support through the link.

          “It was a deliberate attempt to change Jack’s future,” John said slowly, as if trying to follow multiple probabilities of his own. “Someone lured the Doctor there using bait they knew he couldn’t ignore.”

          “Yes.”

          “So there is something about Jack that makes him very dangerous to someone. And it’s someone big enough to play games with Time Lords. Couldn’t be too many of those around.”

          “But why?” Jack was genuinely baffled. “At worst, I’m the Doc’s muscle. At best, I’m the guy trying to help the human race through a major transition point. But it happened without me. Hell, I read about it in history books. The only thing I do is just kind of keep things moving.”

          “Jack.” TARDIS’s tone of voice told the Captain she was on the verge of giving him a very Donna-like clip on the ear. “Wake up and smell the Vortex. You are not a man. And don’t give me that arch look. You are a Fact, capital F. You influence Time just by existing. Everything you do causes ripples.”

          “Huh?”

          “Ok, follow here, Captain Gorgeous. You were supposed to die at the Game Station. Well, that or... something else, never mind what. Rose changed your destiny, big time. Now, if she had just resurrected you, your timeline would have kinked a little, but no harm done. Instead she made you immortal. She made you into a being over which Time has no authority. It has to move around you, because it can’t move you. You generate probability lines like a New Year's fireworks display generates light and smoke. Capisce?”

          John gave a low whistle. “So that’s it. Jack can’t be changed or destroyed as he is now. But…”

          “If his timeline can be changed before he gets to the Game Station, everything he has done afterwards disappears.” Ianto sat bolt upright, letting go of Jack’s hand, and turned to the other TARDIS. “You said you had followed the probability lines. What was the best possible outcome?”

          “You were shot as a traitor when Torchwood found out about Lisa. Gwen was killed in the line of duty at twenty-nine. Martha and my Other were trapped at the end of time with no way to return to Earth.”

          “If that’s the best, don’t for God’s sake tell us the worst.” Gwen took a big gulp of her coffee, and then made a face. “Cold. I don’t suppose we can assume that they will give up with one try?”

          “Unlikely.”

          “So first, we need to find out what are the other weak points in Jack’s mortal timeline and figure out a way to protect them.” John tapped something into his i/o cube. “And second, we need to find out who’s doing it, and why.”

          “I have some ideas about that.”

          The Doctor stood in the doorway, supporting himself with one arm around Toshi’s shoulders. He was wearing some of Andy’s clothes, which looked a little short and ridiculous on his lanky frame. He looked pale and a little shaky but his eyes were looking around in his usual inquisitive fashion.

          “Nice place. Much better than that old fish bowl upstairs. And the Sontaran equipment, very nice retrofit, salvaging always works doesn’t it? Oh, thanks,” he said to Jonas, who had offered his seat, “I’m still a little unsteady. Now, what was I saying? Oh, yes, I have some ideas.”

          “Doc,” Jack said, “focus here. What ideas?”

          “About your timeline. It occurred to me that if they had failed to keep you from reaching the Game Station, they could try it the other way.”

          “Other way?”

          “Rose, Jack, Rose! They can keep Rose from going back. So all we have to do is go back and find Rose right at that moment and…”

          “No.” John held up a hand. “That would be too chancy, too small a window of opportunity. Whoever planned this is thorough and methodical. The best way to stop Rose from going to the Game Station is to keep her from meeting you at all.”


	3. Chapter 3

            In spite of a certain reputation for flamboyance, Toshi knew how to stay out of the way when it suited her. The discussion going on around the table scared her damn near witless. There was someone out there gunning for their Captain, and by extension all of Torchwood, and they were confident enough, or arrogant enough, to try and con a Time Lord into doing their dirty work. She hadn’t felt so out of her depth since her first day at the artifacts lab; looking at the others – Jonas, Lizzie, Tommy Ng – she could see the same uneasiness in their faces.

            After she had helped the Doctor to his seat she had gone to stand against the wall near the door. _Playing Secret Service in the American Oval Office_ , her training officer had called it; seeing, hearing, and remembering everything but keeping your trap shut unless specifically called upon or an immediate threat materialized. _Practice silence_ , he had said.   _Silence and memory are  the most important things a new agent can learn._

             But there was something she needed to ask, and it was important. She needed to tell Uncle Jack – _the Captain, always the Captain while at work_ – something really important.

             “Captain.”

             Jack looked over his shoulder. “What is it, Toshiko Gwendolyn?”

             She winced at the full use of her name, but dammit, this was _important_. “Sir, should I remember someone named Rose? I think I should remember her, but I don’t know why.”

             The Captain stared at her for a moment, then turned to the people around the table. “Gwen? Do you remember Rose?”

             “Rose who, Jack?”

             “Andy?”

             “No. Nothing.”

             “John.”

             “Vaguely. We were talking about someone… no, sorry. It’s gone.”

             The Doctor’s face crumpled with grief. “It’s already happened, Jack. Rose is gone.”

             “I’m still here!”

             Ianto stroked the bracelet on his wrist. “The teacher has placed a stasis field around you. It will sustain you for a while, but if we don’t fix this soon the probability wave will get too strong to fight off.”

             “The TARDIS and I can trace the ripples back to the source,” the Doctor said.

             “And risk being caught in the wave as it solidifies?” TARDIS snorted. “Don’t even think about it.”

             “We need to do something!” the Time Lord snarled.

             “See this is why you big hero types need people like me.” Andy activated the virtual keyboard in front of him. “Finding someone is not Time Lord work. It’s cop work. Let see. Name?”

             “Rose Tyler,” Jack said, catching on. “Born in London in 1986 to Peter and Jackie Tyler. Father died the year after she was born. Lived in the Powell Estate. Gwen, look for a Mickey Smith…”

             “Don’t bother.” Andy tapped a key and the information he was looking at was displayed in all the monitors. “Eight-year-old Rose Tyler and her friend Mickey Smith were the last victims of Thomas Eversole, aka the Bad Santa.  Their bodies were found in the Thames several days after their disappearance. They had been slashed to ribbons. Eversole denied killing them, and the m.o. was different from all the others, but the police thought there was enough circumstantial evidence to charge him with the crimes."  
  
            "Or maybe the police needed to reassure the terrified citizens that the monster had been caught," Gwen said. "It wouldn't be the first time."  
  
            "Evidence was thin, but real," Andy said. "Eversole was seen on the estate near the playground where Rose and Mickey spent time after school. Positive i.d. from a number of parents and children. Eversole was a single white man, loner but seemed harmless. Neighbors were, as they say in the news reports, shocked and dismayed to find out he was a serial killer.”

             “Can we get his psych files?” Gwen asked. “They might have something we can use.”

             “Coming up.” Andy displayed more documents. “Eversole kidnapped and killed children in pairs, always a blond girl and a dark-skinned boy. He gave them biscuits and juice laced with poison. He claimed that he was instructed to do so by a Dark God and that he fought against it as long as possible. And get this. He also claimed that Rose and Mickey were killed by the Dark God himself. When asked to describe his God, he drew them a picture instead.”

             A new image appeared in the monitors. The thing on display was a madman’s version of the monsters that had attacked the Boeshane settlement.

             “All right. Now we know.”  Andy looked at Ianto. “Do we need hard copies?”

             “No.”

             “Oh, no, no, no. What do you two think you’re doing?” demanded the Doctor. “I will handle this myself.”

             “No, you won’t.” Uncle Ianto was using his calmest, most reasonable tone; Toshi hoped the Doctor was paying enough attention to catch the warning signs. “For three reasons. First, you cannot meet Rose Tyler or Mickey Smith at that particular moment, even if you’re wearing a different face. It will play merry hell with the time lines and we can’t attract the attention of the real Reapers at this point. Second, if we fail, you are the last line of defence in protecting Jack. And third, I can only take one and I need someone who speaks the language.”

             “You’re going to London!”

             “Cop, Doctor. I need someone who speaks cop, just in case. We don’t know when Rose and Mickey were taken and that’s exactly where we need to be. Least damage possible. In, get the kids away from Eversole, out. If we need to talk to the police, we need to be able to pass for one of them.”

             The Doctor seemed about to argue, then turned to the Captain, who had been watching the confrontation along with everyone else. 

             “Jack?”

             “Sorry, Doc. Ianto’s right. You and I are stuck here for the duration. Besides, I don’t think I could do anything even if I wanted to.”

             He raised his hand. Toshi could see his skin becoming translucent as they watched. Small tremors shook his whole body like someone in the early stages of a seizure.

             “All right, that’s it, no more chatter,” Gwen jumped up. “Ianto, Andy, get going. Doctor, you have a job to do, so let’s get cracking before we run out of time.”

             The sight of her mother in full battle mode terrified Toshi more than everything else she had seen put together. Gwen Cooper-Williams’s children had figured out early that when their mother was at her bossiest was when she was the most scared.

             Uncle Ianto took the Captain’s hands and brought them to his lips. There was something so intensely personal in the look they shared that Toshi felt like an intruder. She knew they loved each other, but usually they expressed it in sexy glances, light touches, and playful commentary. It wasn’t often that the bedrock of commitment and passion was displayed for the world to see. 

             “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Uncle Ianto whispered. “A few hours, no more.”

             “Can you do this, cariad?”

             “Teacher says I can go anywhere, anywhen on Earth. Don’t worry, you’re the risk taker in this relationship.” Rolling his eyes slightly at Jack’s answering snort, he turned to Andy. “Are you ready?”

             “No,” Andy sighed. “But it’s not going to stop me from going.”

             Ianto put his hand on Andy’s shoulder and the two of them faded from view.  Toshi heard the Captain mutter something about volcanoes before he turned back to the others.

 


	4. Chapter 4

            Police stations, Andy reflected with a grim sort of amusement, looked the same everywhere and everywhen. Especially in the areas of town where the relationship between the police and the policed was at best watchful and at worst a fucking mess. Tired-looking furniture, outdated equipment, and unhappy cops fought it out for space in a windowless box of a building that stank of disinfectant and warmed-over curry.

             Marcus Allen was an amazingly handsome man, the kind that belonged wrapped around a Jaguar and a blonde in a magazine ad, but he was all cop, and it showed. It was in the eyes. Disillusioned, shrewd, they cut through nonsense without effort. Those cop’s eyes gauged the two men sitting on the other side of the desk, and Andy knew the brain behind them was drawing conclusions. He would have to watch his step with this one.

             “So what’s Cardiff doing in my turf?” The accent was pure London. “We don’t exactly have overlapping communities.”

             “You’d be surprised.” Andy took a sip of his tea and nearly gagged; Torchwood had definitely spoiled his tastebuds. “We’re looking for a Thomas Eversole. We think he was involved in a series of violent break-ins last summer in one of our better tourist areas.”

             “Tommy Eversole wouldn’t say boo to a penkingese,” Allen said dismissively. “His idea of crime is nicking sweets from the corner shop.”

             “That’s as it may be, but we would like to ask him a few questions.” Andy crumpled the paper cup and tossed it in the garbage. “If he wasn’t involved, we can be on our way back home tonight. If he is, well, I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”

             “I suppose.” Shoving off with one foot against the side of the desk, Allen sent his chair  rolling back to the wall of filing cabinets behind him. “Let’s see here.  Tommy’s last permanent address was with his dear old bitch of a mother. Took better care of her pussies than her kids…Arnie, answer my phone, will you? Thanks, mate… but after she went off to the great cattery in the sky he’s bounced from one depressing little bedsit to another all over the East End… here it is.”

             “You’re not coming?”

             “Nah. If it turns out the little weasel really did something, bring him here… yeah, Arnie?”

             A very young-looking eager puppy of a constable bounced into the office. “That friend of yours from that weird group up in Greenwich… Harkness… he says he’s on his way to take you to lunch.”

             Andy stood up, holding a hand out for the card. “Sounds like you’re going to have a better afternoon than we will, so I’ll get out of your way.”

             “I certainly will. The man can get a table in any restaurant in London, and he likes to experiment, money no object. Here you go.”

             “Thanks. We’ll get back to you if something turns up.”

             They managed to make an unremarkable exit. As they stepped outside into the dreary early afternoon, Ianto scanned the area, then pointed Andy to a narrow lane running between the station and a dilapidated Victorian factory building. They hurried out of sight just as a tall man in a swinging military coat turned a corner at the other end of the street. 

             Andy couldn’t help but cackle like a lunatic. “Trust Jack to find the handsomest cop in London.”

             “Trust him to find the handsomest alien in London,” Ianto corrected briskly.

             “Allen is not human?”

             “Alien as a weevil,” Ianto confirmed. “But with a whole better makeup. Let me see that card. Hang on.”

             They materialized in an unintrusive corner of a street whose better days were so far behind it they probably wore cloche hats and rolled stockings. Now it was lined with take-aways, launderettes, charity shops, and cheap cafes. Above them, dinky flats housed recent immigrants, poor students, and the odd pensioner with nowhere else to go.

             Andy pointed at one of the buildings. “That one. Second floor.”

             They looked around until the found a café whose window tables had a clear view of the building. They ordered food they had no intention of eating – though the coffee was actually decent – and waited.

             Evening came and with it the street filled with late shoppers and early drinkers. They paid up and walked out, strolling slowly and keeping an eye on the building. Finally, Eversole emerged. He was a smallish, unremarkable man that no-one would look at twice. He seemed oddly disconnected from everything around him, as if reality was somewhere else and the people he avoided were phantoms.

             “Looks high as a kite.”

             “No,” Ianto sniffed, to Andy’s mind a bit like a blood hound. “More like… possessed. Come on, Andy.”

             They trailed Eversole for nearly two hours, as it grew late and the streets emptied. After a while they entered  newer residential area, all concrete blocks and steel piping with no aesthetic pretence. As they turned a corner, the street widened into a small square. In the center a sorry excuse for a playground tried for cheerfulness. Andy had walked a couple of dozen places like this one in his years as a street cop. They were pretty much identical – a bureucrat’s idea of decent housing for the working class.

             Ianto tapped Andy on the shoulder and pointed at the two children sitting on the swings. Their heads were close together as they whispered and giggled. The girl already showed traces of the beauty she would grow into, while the boy was  a miniature copy of his older self.

             Eversole  stopped by the chain link fence that separated the playground equipment proper from the rest of the square, then turned back to collapse onto one of the rusty benches lined up with military precision along the walk. Andy and Ianto took cover in the shadow of two buildings that formed an “L” directly across from where their quarry sat.

             “What are we going to do?” Andy whispered.

             “Maybe you should let me help with that.”

             The voice made them both whirl around. Marcus Allen was leaning against a lamp post, hands in pockets, grinning in a way that reminded Andy uncomfortably of Jack.

             “How the hell did you know where to find us?” he hissed.

             “I didn’t.” Allen joined them. “But I did know where to find Tommy. And there you were.”

             “What made you suspect something?”

             Allen smirked and gestured towards Ianto. “He’s a great poker player. You? Probably good enough to beat any human, but not me. You spooked when Arnie mentioned Jack’s name. That means one of two things. Either you’re aliens on the run from Torchwood or you are Torchwood, but you don’t want Jack to find out what you’re up to. Which is it?”

             “Look, Allen, I’d tell you if I could, but the one thing Jack can’t know in this time is that we exist. It gives me palpitations just to think how many things can go wrong.”

             “So. You know Jack, but he doesn’t know you… yet?”

             “Allen…”

             The alien seemed to come to a decision. “All right. Never mind. I think I see your problem. But exactly what are you doing here?” He held up his hand, stopping Andy before he could get started. “And no, I’m never going to tell Jack anything. That lunch was goodbye. My people are coming for me. I’ll be out of London by tomorrow morning, one way or the other.”

             “That guy,” Andy indicated Eversole, “is Bad Santa.”

             “Fuck! You sure?”

             “Yes.” Ianto made a chopping-off gesture with one hand. “And we have to get those kids away from him unharmed or some very important things are going to hell in a handbasket. So let’s think of something right now, because he looks about to snap.”

             “OK.”

             Before they could stop him, Allen strolled out from between the buildings. “Oi, you two! It’s late. Go home!”

             The girl muttered something Andy couldn’t hear, but given his experience with the Cardiff versions of miss Rose Tyler, he suspected was highly uncomplimentary. Allen’s response was a short bark of laughter.

             “Cheeky brat. I’d run you in, except I’d have to deal with your mother in the morning. Come to think of it, I’ll just call her. See what she ways when she finds out you’re out here instead of where she left you.”

             Faced with that particular horror, the kids jumped off the swings and zoomed out of the playground. Allen turned to the man on the bench.

             “Hey, Tommy, it’s been a long time. Where’ve you been?”

             Eversole muttered incoherently, waving his hands about. His eyes were wild with terror. Andy could almost smell it, and he was sure Ianto could. Suddenly Eversole threw back his head and started to howl. Above his head, a _rip_ appeared in mid-air, and a huge black shape started to push through. Its oversized hands grasped at the edges of the hole and shoved, fighting to escape the clinging… whatever it was. The air was filled with the smell of rotting flowers. 

             Eversole keened in panic and threw himself aside. Andy and Ianto started running towards Allen, who seemed paralyzed by the sight. But as the creature pulled its monstrous body out, Allen raised his hands above his head. Ianto skidded to a halt and pulled Andy back by the collar. Andy tried to free himself, but the sight in front of him stopped him cold.

             Light started to gather between Allen’s hands, a blinding white ball that burned into Andy’s retinas. The creature tried to push himself back into the rip, as a spear of light shot from the ball and sealed it shut. The light kept on growing brighter and brighter, until Andy was completely blinded. He heard something like an explosion, but somehow he knew it was happening inside his head. There was a high-pitched whine like an overloading generator, and then everything was dark.

             Andy’s eyesight returned slowly. Allen was gone. Eversole was on the ground, unconscious. Above him stood a man in battered trainers, jeans, and a leather jacket. A man he had never met, but whose sardonic grin he had stared at every day for over ten years, in a photograph above the sideboard of the Torchwood Three conference room. Something in his mind refused to accept it. He looked at Ianto and encountered an even deeper shock in his best friend’s face.

             “Hey, Tea-Boy. Just like old times. You get into trouble, I get you out.”

             Andy had to strain to hear Ianto’s whisper.

             “Owen?” 


	5. Chapter 5

            While everyone else was watching her uncles dematerialize, Toshi was watching the Doctor. His attention was on the Captain. Toshi had always known that the relationship between the Time Lord and her uncle Jack was deeper and more complex than either of them would admit. There was mutual respect tinged with a bit of competitiveness, a comfortable familiarity with each other’s quirks, and a tightly leashed sexual attraction. But at the core there was the unshakeable trust of men who had fought monsters together, and had saved each other's lives a dozen times over.

             On the Doctor’s part, though, there was something else: guilt. He had used the Captain as a weapon more than once, and the Torchwood leader had paid the price. The fact that he had done it cheerfully and without question was even worse. The weight of that perfect faith lay heavily on the Time Lord’s shoulders.

             Toshi wondered if the Doctor knew exactly how much he loved the Captain. Probably not. In some things, the Time Lord was a past master at self-deception.

             He also was constitutionally unable to sit and wait while someone he cared about was in danger. She bet herself a new pair of evening sandals that it would take him less than five minutes before he remembered what her mother had said. She promptly won her bet.

             “You said I had a job to do. What is it?”

             The Torchwood Three boss looked up from the open files in front of her. “Huh?”

             “You said I had a job to do,” he repeated impatiently. “What is it?”

             She gave a heavy sigh and spoke as if to a recalcitrant four-year-old. “You have to find out who’s behind all this. Otherwise they’ll keep coming after him.”

             “It doesn’t work that way,” the Doctor said. “Playing about with time lines tears holes in the fabric of the Universe, so it protects itself by making it almost impossible to do. Trying it twice at the same point in spacetime would create such a boomerang effect that whoever was doing it would wink out of existence between one breath and the next. The TARDIS stopped the attempt on Jack. If Ianto and Andy succeed in protecting Rose, Jack’s time line will be safe.”

             “Couldn’t they try to change other events in his life?”

             “Not really. There are only a few points in a person’s life significant enough to trigger major change if outside pressure is applied. You can change your own time line by simply making a choice, but the Universe makes other people work really hard before they can budge it.”

             “So we’re assuming,” John said, “that the only vulnerable points in Jack’s time line are his loss of Gray and meeting you and Rose Tyler.”

             “I would say so,” Toshi was shocked by the weakness in the Captain’s voice. “Well, that and…”

             “The Time Agency wiping your memory,” John said.

             “I think I’ve just run out of luck,” Jack smiled at the Doctor. “I don’t remember anything about those years, Doc. I don’t know what happened or where.”

             “Oh, you still have some luck left,” John moved to sit next to Jack. “Me. After you left me, I made myself into the Universe’s living expert on Jack Harkness, from what you had for breakfast on the morning of your tenth birthday to the con you ran on the Caipernians that got you the ticket out of Agency space. Between us we probably have enough information to at least narrow the search area. The problem is time.”

             “What do you mean, time?” Gwen asked.

             “We’ll need to correlate huge amounts of data, including our personal memories and all the information in our wrist straps, and then make some extrapolations…”

             “Wild-ass guesses,” interjected the Captain, grinning.

             “Exactly.  You and I can data dump all we know into mainframe using a neural link. She can do the correlations, but intuition takes a different set of cognitive abilities. Mainframe’s neural network is in place, but she hasn’t yet developed those.”

             “I can help with that," TARDIS said. “Teacher and I have been watching mainframe for a while now. Her sentience is dormant, but it’s there. Usually the leap upward is triggered by a catastrophic event and emergence can be quite traumatic. I can guide her and soften the impact.”

             “So what are we waiting for?” Gwen asked.

             “It’s not that simple, Gwen!” John snapped. “AI’s are very fragile things. If we rush into waking up mainframe we could end up with a psychotic child, and just turning her off would not be an option! The very few successful AI’s have awoken by themselves and lived only a few years.”

             “That’s where having me as midwife can be useful,” TARDIS said to John. “I can give her as much time as she needs within the link.  I can also pull the plug if I have to.”

             John seemed to shudder. “Any other possibilities we should consider?”

             “Not really. There might be a surprise or two. Well, don’t look at me like that, Sweet Cheeks! Nothing involving intelligence is ever straightforward.” She shrugged. “Your decision.”

            John and the Captain exchanged a long look. Toshi got the impression that there was some secret between them, something about mainframe that only they knew. Finally, without breaking eye contact, John gestured to TARDIS.

             “Go ahead.”

             She moved to stand between them. Her hands ghosted over their heads and came to rest gently on their shoulders. To those watching, only a few minutes passed, but they felt a noticeable change in the atmosphere of the room. The air grew stale and dry and dust motes settled into a fine covering over the furniture. Toshi could hear the distant whine of the Rift containment field generators as clearly as if she were standing in the engine room. The sound rose in pitch as if something was draining energy directly from the Rift then it gradually returned to its normal rumble.       

            The Doctor had been watching the monitors, shifting from one foot to the other in his usual manic fashion. They had been displaying the usual Torchwood screensaver, but suddenly information started scrolling rapidly up, text and graphics wrapping around each other in weirdly organic patterns. Reading it seemed impossibly difficult to Toshi, but the Doctor seemed to follow it without any problem.

             “Stop!” He barked abruptly. “Go back. There.” He turned to Jack with a bemused look. “Only you, Jack. Only you would have tangled with the Ageroi and lived to tell about it.”

             “I did?” The Captain looked into his own monitor. “Well. I’ll be damned in spades. I did. I must have been nuts.”

             “Who are these Ageroi?” Gwen asked.

             “Just about the most dangerous bastards you will ever meet. Sontarans cross the street when they see them coming. Theirs is the only sector that has never had a Dalek eruption.” John started to laugh. “And Jack spent at least two weeks of his life in an Ageroi ship and can’t remember anything about it.”

             “Actually,” Jack said slowly. “I do remember some of it now…”

             The Doctor jumped up. “That’s it. We have to go now. Mr. Hart, I might need some help. Will you accompany me?”

             “I can’t, Doctor. By this time, Jack and I are… well, let’s just say we know each other very well. And don’t really like each other at all. He’s likely to do the absolute opposite of whatever I tell him just to piss me off.”

             “That’s true,” Jack said.

             Gwen straightened up with that look on her face everyone knew to interpret as _an executive decision has been made, now hop to it._ “Toshiko Gwendolyn, you will go with the Doctor.”

             “No!” The Time Lord  and the Captain bellowed at the same time.

             “Why not?” Gwen said angrily. “My daughter is a Torchwood agent. She knew exactly what she was doing when she signed on the dotted line. God knows I tried as best I could to discourage her. But now, at this moment, she’s the best qualified. In fact, she has been training for this all her life.” 

             She gave the Doctor a look that had him looking down at his trainers. “You need someone with the skills John has. My daughter has them. She lacks his experience, but I expect you to supply that. We don’t have time for an argument. Go!”.


	6. Chapter 6

 

            Gwen looked at the UNIT briefing papers in front of her and saw gobbledygook… again. She had been doing this little dance for several hours now, pretending she was doing constructive work while her mind was everywhere but on the job.  Her daughter, her baby, was running around time and space with an alien, who, as far as Gwen could see, wreaked as much havoc on his allies as on his enemies. Her… Duw, what exactly was Jack to her?... was fading out of existence and taking most of her reality with him.  Two of her closest friends were somewhere in the past chasing a serial killer. And her stubborn, impossibly wonderful husband was sitting in her office, drinking tea and sifting through the latest weevil sighting reports.

             Of course she had called Rhys the moment TARDIS faded from the Hub. He had rushed over, arriving laden with baked goods, to be greeted with undisguised relief  and enthusiasm by his “kids”.

             It had started right after Rhys sold his share of the lorry business, with visions of late mornings in bed and uninterrupted footie matches. Instead, Jack had drafted him to help with a new recruit, a brilliant young mathematician whose introduction to Torchwood had involved exploding green larvae and attempted possession. That young woman had brought along a friend, and that one, another. Soon, Rhys was spending most of his free time mentoring young agents. Jack had made it almost official, creating for him the post of “minder of youngsters.”  It had worked very well indeed. Being one of Tad Rhys’s kids had become a sort of badge of honour among the younger set.

             * _Gwen*_

            She nearly fell out of her chair.  She could count on one hand the number of times Ianto had communicated with her mind-to-mind, and she would have fingers left over. It was still the most startling experience she’d ever had.

             _* I need you to bring Jack and John down to secure Archives. Don’t tell anyone else yet*_

_*Rhys is here*_

There was a brief silence at the other end. _*All right, bring him too*_

            _*Give me a few minutes*_

             She felt his wordless assent, then his presence left her mind. She shivered. Ianto’s mind radiated the same warm strength she had noticed in the man when they had first met, but there was an endless depth to it that left her feeling a little lost and empty. It had taken her a while to figure it out, but she had  finally come to realize that while she was attracted to the mysterious, dangerous men, she loved and needed the reassuring human solidity that was Rhys.

             “Cariad.” She stroked his arm. “I need you to come with me.”

             They went down to the main floor. Jack and John were in the sitting area. Jack seemed to be dozing. Gwen was relieved to see he had not deteriorated further; in fact, he seemed to have a little more colour. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking.

             “McGee!” She watched her weapons expert and computer-geek-in-training bounce up. Jonas reminded her of a puppy; all he lacked was a wagging tail. But he was extremely competent and devoted to Rhys.

             “Have you heard from Yan?”

             “Yes, ma’am. False alarm. Turns out the stuff was bioluminescent algae some kid was growing in a tank for his school science project.” He rolled his eyes. “Once he stopped cursing, Yan said to tell you he would stop by Billie’s and pick up some supper for everyone.”

             “Good. You’re in charge until he gets back. We’re going down to secure Archives for a bit.”

             “Yes, ma’am.”

             She smiled at him gently and saw him flinch. “And Jonas? No CCTV.”

             “I would never do that, ma’am.”

             She petted his cheek. “Yes, you would, Jonas. I once knew somebody just like you and she would have.”

             “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am!”

             Gwen joined Rhys and John in the sitting area. She shook Jack awake gently.

             “Jack? Come on, sweetheart. Ianto wants us down in secure Archives.”

             “He’s back?”

             “Don’t know. He just” she pointed at her temple, “told me to get us five down there.”

             They trooped into the Archives section and followed the maze-like path between rooms. Secure Archives was a smallish room that didn’t look like much on the surface, just a few locked cabinets and a walk-in safe at the far end, but like most things designed by Jack Harkness and improved upon by Ianto Jones, it concealed a number of nasty surprises, both Earth and alien. But as Gwen crossed the deceptively open archway leading into the room, she could have been charged by a pack of rabid weevils and not have noticed.

             Her attention was riveted by the man standing next to Ianto. For a few seconds Gwen wondered if life with Torchwood had finally sent her round the bend, but Jack’s sharp intake of breath and Rhys’s muttered _what the fuck!?_ reassured her. She figured if they also saw Owen Harper, looking exactly like he did on the day he died, smirking exactly like he used to when he wanted to irritate the piss out of her, she didn’t need to turn herself in to Martha for psychiatric evaluation. So she ambled into the room as if she had just shared her chocolate croissants with him at breakfast.

             “Hello, Owen.”

             “Aaww, Gwen, not even a hug?” He cocked his thumb at Ianto. “This one gave me a hug.”

             “You bastard.”

             She flew into his opened arms. In her own muddled way she had loved him once, and she knew he had come to care for her. He wrapped her in a bear hug that nearly squeezed all the air out of her, then stroked her cheek in a gentle caress.

             “Still beautiful, babe.”

             She slammed him back against one of the cabinets. “Give me a reason why I shouldn’t clock you one right now, Owen Harper.”

            “Still temperamental,” he sighed theatrically, then pushed past her. “Rhys, mate, you’re a hero to have put up with her all these years.”

             They exchanged a hand-shake-and-shoulder-slap sort of greeting. Rhys, Gwen noticed, seemed a lot less rattled than she had been, or maybe he had just reached overload. With a last pat and a grin, Owen moved to stand in front of Jack.

             “Hello, boss.”  


            Wordlessly, Jack enveloped him in a hug, holding Owen to his chest as if he were a child. Gwen got a little misty-eyed at the sight, especially when Owen’s arms tightened around Jack’s waist and she heard a slight snuffle. Of all their mad, complicated relationships with Jack, Owen’s had been the maddest and most complicated, but underneath it all lay an almost father-son bond.

             When the two finally separated, Jack seemed to make an effort to return to his normal self. “Owen? Should I let Gwen clock you or are you going to tell us what happened to you?”

             Owen gave him a cheeky grin. “Home sweet home.” He turned abruptly serious. “I was in the plant, and I knew I was going to die. Funny enough, I was okay with it, well, not exactly okay ‘cause I knew radiation poisoning is fucking painful, but I was going out making a difference and it felt good. Instead I got a blinding flash of white light and next thing I know I’m standing in this big room with a bloke in white robes who tells me I get to be your guardian angel.”

             “Owen,” Jack growled.

             “No, really! When the Bad Wolf resurrected you, she really buggered up the balance between chaos and order in the Universe, Jack. You walked around generating order like some sort of positive engine. It made you very unpopular in certain quarters. Chaos decided to take you out of the equation. They sent one of their biggest and baddest against you.”

             “Abaddon.”

             “Yeah. Except you gave him terminal indigestion and in the process things got even more buggered up. Elemental energy doesn’t just dissipate, so when Abaddon blew up, his energy went straight into you. And there you were, the greatest elemental energy generator of all time, sparking in every direction like a cheap firecracker. The Universe protected itself in the only way it could. It divided itself around you and _that_ created two equally possible futures for you.”

             “Wonderful. As if I didn’t have enough trouble with one. But that doesn’t tell me anything about you.”

             “Chaos and order cannot act directly in the physical Universe, so they take human form and recruit mortals to do the actual dirty work. Hey, don’t give me that look. I work for the good guy, Jack. The White Guardian represents the forces of order that work to keep the Universe balanced and evolving properly. The other guys want to tilt the whole thing in the other direction.”

             “So all we have to do is defeat chaos?” John asked sarcastically. “One of the two organizing forces of the Universe?”

             “His agents. Yeah.” Owen nodded. “And chaos really hates you, Jack.”

             “Why?” Jack sounded aggrieved. “I’m just the innocent bystander caught in the gunfight. What did I ever do to it?”

             “Not you, directly. Your friend in the blue box went up against the Black Guardian and kicked his arse. Chaos has a long memory.”

             “Great.”

             “So,” Ianto said, “we need to find a way to eliminate the chaotic time line.”

             “No.” Owen took a deep breath. “This is the difficult part and I don’t understand it myself very well, but… parts of Jack’s future have already happened.”

             “I knew”  Rhys said to nobody in particular, “that I should have just stayed in the lorry business. How can the future have happened already?”

             “I said it was complicated! Anyway. All chaos has to do now is to make sure either one of Jack’s time lines is eliminated, with bonus points for destroying the one Jack has already lived. We have to make sure both time lines play out. That will keep the Universe in perfect balance.”

             “So let’s see if I got this right,” John said. “Jack here has two futures, and we have to make sure both come true.”

             “Yeah.”

             “How the hell do we do that?!”

             “Damned if I know.”.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jack's pseudonym is taken from the novels by Margery Allingham. Call it my own tribute to my own beloved 5th Doctor, Peter Davison, who played the part after he left Doctor Who.

            The Ageroi transfer point station hovered on the stable Lagrange point between the twin moons of the Ageroi home planet. It wasn’t exactly beautiful, but its stark functionality had a sort of severe elegance. Six spokes radiated from a central structure. They were all surrounded with different-sized docking platforms. Five of the spokes ended in smaller structures. The sixth one ended in a secondary cluster of platforms. 

             “Living environments. Oxygen breathers, high-heat methane breathers, zero-gees, cold-bloodeds, crystalines or gaseous,” the Doctor pointed in turn to each of the spokes. “The Ageroi prefer to live on their ships, so no habitats for them. Very efficient. Very Ageroi.”

             Beyond the station, the whole of space seemed to be taken up by a glowing red dust cloud that swayed and shifted as if caught in a stiff breeze. As it moved, stars, constellations, and even whole galaxies were revealed and concealed in an ever-changing display.

             “The Ageroi call it Ekha’ashina’khyrea.” The Doctor told her. “The closest translation would be The Dragon’s Breath.”

             “It’s beautiful,” Toshi said. “You could watch for hours.”

             “Some people do just that. A couple of religions have sprung up around the Dragon’s Breath.”

             The TARDIS sat under a rocky overhang on the surface of one of the moons, hidden from view by the station’s shadow. Toshi stood by the open door, the Doctor directly behind her. He had taken to doing that right at the beginning of the trip, which had taken a few hours rather than the few minutes she had expected. When she asked him about it, he had shrugged.

             “I give her the place and time, she decides how. Most of the time it’s instantaneous, but sometimes not. In this case I have a hunch she’s searching for Jack’s energy signature before she sets us down. The closer we are to the weak point in Jack’s time line, the less chance we have of doing damage ourselves.”

             She had accepted the explanation, ignoring the faint echo of laughter in her mind. With the TARDIS’s permission she explored all the places she had heard Uncle Jack and Aunt Martha talk about. It didn’t take her long to notice that the Doctor was, somehow, everywhere she wanted to be. At first she wondered if he was following her because he didn’t trust her, but then she realized that he seemed unconscious of what he was doing. She filed that little fact away as ammunition for the conversation she was planning to have with him as soon as they took care of Uncle Jack’s problem.

             “The station… most of the ones I’ve studied are built either on a moon or as an orbiting satellite to one. It’s the most efficient and least expensive method. Why would the Ageroi build a space station like this?”

             “Besides being efficient the Ageroi are very paranoid. In this location the station has no blind spots. Hard to sneak up on it. The moons are basically weapons platforms. Even if someone managed to take the station they would be blown to smithereens before they got around to making a single demand.” A loud, insistent pinging interrupted the flow of explanations. “Sounds like she found Jack.”

             This time it took only a couple of seconds to rematerialize in what was obviously a storage room. As they stepped out, the Doctor made some adjustments to his sonic screwdriver then swept the air in front of him in a big semicircle, stopping only when the screwdriver emitted a high-pitched whine.

             “This way.”

             Toshi followed him down a narrow corridor that ended in a discreet opening behind a decorative glass wall. Going around it, they found themselves in another corridor. This one was as wide as a four-lane motorway and was lined with what were obviously shops and restaurants.

             “So, airports look the same all over the Universe,” Toshi remarked.

             “Pretty much, yeah.”

             The Doctor took another, much more inconspicuous, reading with the screwdriver, then set out across the crowded corridor. Toshi almost had to run to keep up with him; at one point he came to a sudden full stop and she crashed right into his back. He waved away her apologies and pointed down yet another side corridor that ended at an airlock.

             “Observation deck,” he whispered. “It’s spectacular.”

             When they entered the long, narrow room Toshi had to agree. The roof and walls were transparent. Beyond them, the Dragon’s Breath seemed close enough to touch. There were several small groups clustered at one end. At the other, a young man in dark trousers, boots, and a leather jacket was leaning against the glass, eyes lost in the view. His perfect profile was set in relief, outlined by the seething red mass. It was Jack, a younger, cockier, harder version, but with none of the self-assurance and gentle playfulness her beloved uncle effortlessly projected. 

             On the other hand, he was definitely one gorgeous specimen.

             “Hot. The man is hot.”

             “Stop it!” The Doctor admonished crossly. “Let’s focus on the job here.”

             “I can appreciate the view, Doctor.”

             His face took on that long-suffering look he often wore when dealing with Uncle Jack. “You may not be his genetic descendant, but you are definitely his kid. Let’s go talk to him.”

             “Oh, no, Doctor. _I’m_ going to talk to him. _You_ are going to play tourist and keep an eye out for Reapers or whatever those things were.” She held up a hand. “Save it, Doc. That guy would probably get all hard-assed about being told what to do by another man.”

             She left him stewing and made her way to the other side of the room. As she approached the younger version of her uncle Jack, she tried to ignore the gnawing fear at the pit of her stomach. They were going into it blind. They had no idea what Uncle Jack had done or not done; if they pushed in the wrong direction, her reality – her family, the people she loved, herself – would vanish because it would never have existed.

             “Hello.”

             The voice, she noticed, was still the same. “Hello.”

             He took her hand and brought it to his lips. “Albert. Albert Campion. You can call me…”

             “Rudolph. Should I inquire after Lugg’s health?”

             He shrugged, grinning wryly. “Just my luck to run into a scholar of ancient Earth literature.”

             “Not really. I have an uncle who is a big fan of Allingham’s work.”

             “Like I said, just my luck. “His smile grew a little more twisted. “It hasn’t been my fortnight.”

             “It’s none of my business, but I’m a good listener.”

             He put his hands in his pockets as he turned to stare at the shifting red mass overhead. “That’s the Gargoyle nebula showing right now. It has a scientific name, but that’s what they called it in my world.”

             “I get it. So, how about going somewhere for a cup of coffee?”

             “Have you ever had to do something you hated doing?” The question seemed dragged out of him. “Something so wrong it makes your gut ache?”

             “No.”

             “You’re lucky.” He turned back to her. “Will your friend object violently if we go off for that cup of coffee?”

             “Probably. Rudolph… I said it wasn’t any of my business, but you seem really troubled by whatever you did.”

             “I am, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m a soldier. It’s my duty.”

             “My uncle, the Allingham fan? He’s a soldier too. He says that a soldier cannot afford to pack his conscience away during his service. That there are things a soldier can’t do if he wants to remain human.”

             “There’s nothing I can do!” he shouted. “I already did it, and I can’t stop it!”

             “Rudolph, what did you do?”

             “Planted explosives in the Ageroi crèche.” He gave a bark of laughter so unlike the joyous sound Toshi was used to that it made her heart hurt. “My ship broke down on the other side of the Breath a couple of weeks ago. An Ageroi ship rescued me. In this area they go sublight, so it took the full two weeks to get here. I made good use of the time. I figured out the one weak link in their biological chain. Most species can afford to lose most of one generation and keep going. The Ageroi can’t. Each Ageri reproduces once and only once in its lifetime. The mating pair produces two fertilized eggs which are taken to the crèche and placed in stasis. When one of the mating pair dies, one of the eggs is stimulated into growth. One-one replacement. The post-reproductive Ageroi are all sterile and there aren’t enough immature Ageroi to have a viable generation. If the crèche goes, the Ageroi will be extinct in one hundred years.”

             “But that’s genocide! For God’s sake, why?”

             “The Agency believes the Ageroi are developing temporal weapons. They’re too dangerous!”

             “You have them.”

             “It’s not the same! We wouldn’t…” He ground to a halt. “Oh God, oh God.”

             “There must be something you can do!”

             “I can’t. The explosives are set to go off in less than twenty minutes. Short of having a time machine, I can’t get there in time!”

             “Ah. You may not have a time machine, but we do.” They had been so engrossed in their conversation that they had missed the Doctor’s approach. The Time-Lord made an “after you, Alphonse” gesture. “Shall we?”


	8. Chapter 8

           “Is he all right?”

             Ianto looked up at Rhys. “Holding his own but no more.”

             Rhys leaned over the back of the couch to stare down at a sleeping Jack. “I’ve never seen him look more tired, and I saw him right after he had spent six days chasing a damn basilisk all over the Brecons. Is there anything we can do?”

             “I don’t know. I’ve been feeding him a little energy from time to time but it doesn’t seem to do much.” Ianto rubbed his eyes. “I fucking hate waiting.”

             “Yeah.” Rhys hesitated, then plowed on. “Ianto, are we sure that’s Owen?”

             “Yes. Or at least as close to our Owen as an avatar of Order can be.” Ianto smiled. “I never imagined I could be using _Owen_  and _order_ in the same sentence. And Gwen gets the most expensive pair of sandals in the new Balenciaga spring line. Watching Owen being pushed around was fun.”

             “Oi, Tea-Boy.” Owen, coming up behind them, gave Ianto a smack on the back of the head. “More respect for the heroic dead.”

             “Yeah, yeah.” He turned back to his dozing lover. “Owen, can we win this fight?”

             The doctor pulled one of the ottomans close to the sofa and sat down. “We have a good chance. The Black Guardian tends to overreach. He’s full of pride and you know what that goeth before. Right now it’s up the Doctor and Toshi. If they manage to plug that particular hole, Chaos will be forced to send its agent against us directly.”

             “Who are they? Do you know?”

             “It’s ‘he’ not ‘they’. Chaos doesn’t like to share power too much, so it prefers to have one agent at a time. You’ve met him.”

             “Bilis Manger?”

             “Bingo.”

             “But he failed!” Rhys objected.

             “The way Chaos looks at it, that was Abbadon’s fault. Bilis did what he was supposed to do, which was to sucker us into opening the Rift.”

             “So it’s you against Bilis Manger?”

             “There might be more to it than that, Rhys. Order is a lot less paranoid than Chaos, but in some ways sneakier. I have a feeling it has more irons in the fire than just me.” Owen ran a hand down Jack’s arm. “But I don’t know. Your turn, Ianto. How does it feel, what’s happening to you?”

             Ianto grinned. “By whose standards?”

             They all succumbed to a fit of giggles. Owen slung an arm over Ianto’s shoulders and rested his forehead against it.

             “Bloody Torchwood,” he gasped.

             That set them off again. Somewhere in a small corner of his mind, Ianto knew that there was something not _normal_ about sitting in an underground lair sharing a hearty laugh with a man who had been dead for over thirty years, but he was grateful to have to chance. And Torchwood had never been about _normal_ anyway.

             “Hey, boys, don’t start without me.”

             They looked at Jack. Ianto saw the real emotion in Jack’s eyes, the love he hid behind the cheerfully randy comments because people mattered so much it hurt. He knew the others could see it too, and wondered if Jack realized how transparent he had become to his chosen family.

             “You wish, Harkness.” Owen forced the words out between giggles. “You just wish.”

             “Oh, all right.” Jack mock-pouted. “If you are all going to be that way about it I’ll settle for something to eat. I’m hungry.”

             Owen helped him up. “That’s a good sign. Rhys’s kid brought back all kinds of stuff. Nothing heavy, mind you. You’re still not out of the woods.”

             “Yes, doctor. Soup and toast ok?"  


             I’ll go get it,” Rhys headed out to the kitchen. “I’ll nick some for the rest of us while I’m at it.”

             Owen watched him go, a small frown on this face. “I wonder if Gwen knows the prize she got.”

             Ianto stood up, stretching to work out the kinks from sitting in one position for several hours. “She does. Don’t ever doubt that.”

             “I’m glad she had the chance. Me,” Owen looked towards the place where Tosh’s work station used to be, “I didn’t know what was good for me until it was too late.”

             Unexpectedly, Ianto found his throat clogged up with grief. His memories of Tosh had softened with time, and when he thought of her he tended to think of the good things, the fun times. Owen’s pain seemed fresh and undimmed.

             “Owen,” Jack asked hesitantly, “there’s no chance…”

             “No. Believe me, I asked. They said she had moved on. _When the mortal body dies, one moves on,_ ” he quoted. “That’s why all you see is darkness, Jack. Your body isn’t really dead, so you never move on.”

             “And what is beyond the darkness?”

             “Don’t ask me. I’m still on this side.” Owen twitched his shoulder in the old familiar _conversation closed_ gesture. “Here’s Rhys with our food.”

             “Good, I’m really starv…”

             Jack’s words cut off as he pitched forward, collapsing onto the steps separating the sitting area from the rest of the Hub. Ianto was moving before he even thought about it, his protective instincts overriding the flare up of panic. He lifted Jack up, holding him close, pouring his love through their link. He nearly wept in relief when he felt Jack’s hands grab at the small of his back. He could hear everyone in the place running as the Rift alarms went off, but he was truly aware only of Jack’s body shaking in his arms.

             “Hurts…” 

             The weakness in Jack’s voice set off the panic he had been trying to avoid. “Owen! What the hell is going on?”

             The doctor rushed up with a steaming mug in one hand. “Jack, drink this. Come on, sip. Yes, it’s disgusting, but it’ll give you some energy.” He glanced at the shocked faces around them. “Something’s happening to Jack in the future. Well, his past. Jesus, keeping his time line straight makes me dizzy. Chaos is feeding and amplifying the pain and shock of the event back , forward, whatever, to _our_ Jack. He’s reliving it all.”

             “Can we cut the link?”

            “How? It’s his life we’re… no, wait, there might be a way. The Vortex. You can take him into the Vortex. Chaos and Order both avoid it because they have no power there.”

             “How?”

             “What do you do when you travel through it?”

             “I become… something else. But I wouldn’t be able to change Jack!”

             “You have taken people through the Rift.”

             “Trips take only a few minutes. I use myself as a shield for whoever I’m transporting. But you’re thinking of keeping him there for hours. I don’t know if I can.”

             _*You can. Like this*_

             The Teacher’s instructions were issued in the usual calm terms, but Ianto nearly went into gibbering fits at their content.  He closed his eyes, trying to fight off the nausea.

             _*Proto-validium is extremely responsive to the right mind, and we have been conditioning yours for many years now. It shouldn’t be difficult*_

_*But if I do this, you will die!*_

_*Don’t be silly. Have you not listened to my lectures about TARDIS nature? I will be released. And do not worry about me. I am the Teacher, and there are going to be plenty of students for me to train, if we succeed*_

            “Ianto! Come on, mate!” Owen’s voice had a slight edge of panic. “Focus!”

             Ianto’s eyes snapped open. “Do you know what he wants me to do?”

             “Kind of. For what it’s worth, my boss also thinks you’re ready. And look at Jack. I don’t think he can take much more.”

             Ianto looked at his partner with all his senses, human and TARDIS. Owen was right. Jack’s life force was flickering as his body was forced to relive the trauma in his past. Blood was seeping from his nose and ears, and he was gasping for air.

             “All right. Get everyone back just in case this goes south on me.”

             He blanked everyone and everything from his mind as he focused on the metal band around his wrist. An image arose unbidden: a small ship with a roundish nose and power nacelles under its wings. He looked at it critically and made a number of adjustments. _There_. He poured the image into the proto-validium, forcing the sentient metal into a new shape, then he poured himself into it, molding it all into a new living form. Pain flared along every nerve ending as he stretched his mind, _himself_ , to become a new species of being _._ And then, suddenly, there was music resonating through his molecules, a minor variation of a great symphony his Potentiality recognized and welcomed joyously: the birth song of the TARDIS, pushing back the pain and midwiving him into a new existence. Two voices, two life forces where there had once been so many.

             _*Someday there will be many again. And this time it will be right*_

             Ianto was aware that the others in the Hub could see some of the changes taking place. He held the new form in full Potentiality in his mind, but its image flickered in and out of reality. He could sense Gwen’s fear, and John’s… amusement? And, a little further away, but sharp as a darning needle, his namesake’s intense curiosity.

             _*The Rift-born’s mind is hungry. He will be fun to train*_

             _*How do I do this? If I materialize in the Hub, I’ll bring this section down on our heads*_

_*Hold the image until you start to enter the Vortex, then release it*_

             _*Here we go, then*_

             As he faded out, Jack cradled in his arms, Ianto heard Rhy’s plaintive question. “What he hell was that?”

             “That,” John answered, “is what a Chula warship would be if the boring engineering drones in the Chula War Department had the soul of Michelangelo. But to answer your real question, I think that was Ianto’s TARDIS body.”

             Exactly as Ianto had expected, the shocked silence was broken by Welsh practicality coming to the fore.

             “Bloody hell,” Andy said in dismay, “we’re going to have to enlarge the garage.”


	9. Chapter 9

           The crèche was a vast complex of hexagonal buildings set in the middle of several acres of parkland. They were all different: some were soaring towers, some squat boxes. One seemed to have been upended by a giant’s hand; another had been stretched out of shape like taffy. The whole thing resembled a jumble of children’s toy blocks.

             The Doctor had insisted on plopping the TARDIS down by the front gates, insisting that he had friends he could appeal to in the Ageroi hierarchy. Jack – Rudolph – seemed content to follow his lead. Nothing new there, thought Toshi resignedly. She, on the other hand, was not as compliant. Pulling him aside, she argued furiously.

             “We don’t know what made the Time Agency wipe Uncle Jack’s memory. If we turn him over to the Ageroi, we might be doing more harm than good.”

             “Actually, we do know a little more than we used to,” the Doctor answered. “The Time Agency wants the Ageroi destroyed. If Jack had managed it, they would have given him a medal, not a mind-wipe. And since whoever is behind this didn’t try to stop us from bringing him here…”

             “Whatever the turning point is, it happens here, and that’s what they are aiming for,” she finished the sentence. “Unless we have it all wrong and it has nothing to do with this.”

             “It has to. According to John's information, the two years wiped from Jack’s memory start two weeks ago, when he was picked up by the Ageroi ship. That’s too much of a coincidence. Besides, I think there’s something more important here than Jack’s memories.”

             “What?”

             He took her hand. “Toshi… I know I haven’t given you any reason to like me. But right now, I need you to trust me.”

             “You’re not going to tell me.”

             “I can’t. Yet.”

             Toshi gave him her best imitation of her mother’s don’t-mess-with-me stare. “Fine. I reserve the right to clock you one.”

             “Deal.”

             Now, as the Ageroi soldiers marched towards them, Toshi wondered if being surrounded by former Companions all her life had predisposed her to trust a madman. No, she decided after a few seconds’ reflection. There was something about the madman that made people want to trust him. To love him. For her, it was a family tradition.

             The soldiers were impressive specimens, all over seven feet tall, sleekly muscled, with elegant faces and close-cropped silver hair. They wore the most strictly utilitarian uniforms Toshi had ever seen, even worse than UNIT fatigues. It didn’t matter. The Ageroi were dangerous the same way the Doctor was brilliant and Uncle Jack was charismatic, and it was equally as obvious to an observer; no wonder they even scared the Daleks away. She felt naked without any weapons, but the Doctor had insisted.

             The leader of the group bowed deeply to the Doctor.

             “The Lady bids me welcome you and your companions, Doctor.”

             The Time Lord returned the gesture. “I thank your Lady for her kindness, and I beg audience of her. I bring most urgent news.”

             “Not as urgent as all that. We found the young man’s device and dealt with it. You have saved us the trouble to retrieve him.”

             “Yes, well, that’s neither here nor there. All’s well that ends well. Least said soonest mended and all that. There’s more important fish to fry.”

             Although the Ageros’s expression did not change in the slightest, Toshi got the impression their welcome had just turned a little frosty.

             “And what could be more important than the destruction of our race, Doctor?”

             “Ascension.”

             The single word had an electrifying effect on the Ageroi. They stiffened up, and Toshi could hear a murmur that sounded like a chant or a prayer. The leader raised his hand to silence them.

             “Are you certain, Doctor?”

             “No promises. Your Lady must have the last word.”

             “Indeed. Let us go, then.”

             The squad formed around them and they were herded into one of the tallest towers. The atrium made Toshi gape in disbelief. It soared all the way to a glass roof. Incredibly tall tress with rough silver bark and green and gold leaves created a canopy from which dripped red vines covered in lime green blossoms. White birds with blue-trimmed wings nestled among the branches. A scent a bit like clover honey filled the air.

             “It’s a kai’xa forest,” Jack whispered in her ear. “Extinct in its home planet. The Ageroi hold it as a genetic bank against the possibility that the kai’x may re-establish technological culture. Which is a fancy way of saying _think their way out of the stone age they bombed themselves into_. Early signs are not promising.”

             The guards waved them into an elevator. The smooth, fast ride ended at the top floor. They stepped out into a lobby where two soldiers identical to their own guards stood at attention on either side of a small door. As they approached, the door swung open and they went through without pausing. Obviously they were expected.

             The room beyond was simply furnished. Several low-backed chairs were drawn up around a brazier filled with blue-and-white cubes that emitted a gentle warmth. Blue and white hangings softened the walls. The only grace note was provided by a tall, sinuous metal column in one corner. Toshi was fascinated by the way it constantly changed color and shape in subtle variations. Her eyes kept drifting back to it until the Doctor tapped her shoulder.

             “It’s not polite to stare at the dhijaya.”

             “The what?”

              He made a shushing gesture as one of the drapes moved aside and a woman entered the room. Where every other Ageroi Toshi had ever seen had been over seven feet tall, she topped five feet by maybe a half-inch. Her skull was oddly elongated and her intricately braided hair was an improbably lavender shade. She was so slight she could be toppled by a slight breeze, but everyone in the room, including Uncle Jack and the Doctor, stood at attention as she approached.

             “Doctor.”

             “My Lady.” The Time Lord took the offered hands. “You do not change.”

             “And how I wish I could.”

             He waved towards Toshi and Jack. “I might bring the solution.” 

             “Aaah. The young woman?”

             “No.”

             “Our young genocidal maniac, then?”

             “Excuse me.”

             Jack’s tone made Toshi flinch. She knew that tone of voice; she recognized the look. The slightly panicked expression in the Doctor’s face told her he recognized it too. Jack ambled over to where the Ageroi matriarch stood. Bowing deeply, he brought one of her hands to his lips.

             “Madame. I am honored.”

             “Stop it,” hissed the Doctor.

             “I’m only saying…”

             “Never mind! Just answer a question. Was your maternal grandmother adopted?”

             The younger man looked startled. “My great-grandmother, actually. Her family was traveling on a liner that got caught in an asteroid shower. She was one of the few survivors.”

             “Come here.” The authority in the Lady’s voice could not be denied. “Give me your hands.”

             They linked hands palm to palm. Although Toshi could not see anything, she could feel energy gathering around them. Behind her, the guards began to hum. The noise became almost unbearable even though it never rose above a whisper, and then died out as the Lady released her hands.

             “Such a gift, Doctor.”

             “Wait until you get to know him better.”

             “Not that I’m sorry for my change in status,” Jack said, “but what is going on?”

             “About one hundred galactic years ago,” the Lady said, “an Ageroi family traveling incognito was lost in a liner accident. We were told a child survived, but we were never able to find it.”

             “I’m sorry, Lady, but I can’t have been my great-grandmother. The Time Agency goes to great lengths to make sure all its agents are human. The genetic tests are quite extensive. They would have found any trace of alien ancestry.”

             She smiled gently. “When an Ageroi adult takes the appearance of another race, it’s a superficial change. Ageroi children’s cells have much more plasticity and the children throw themselves wholeheartedly into the game. They are human, except for a certain kind of residual energy in the blood not detectable by human tests.”

             “So my great-granny was born Ageroi?”

             “A very important Ageroi. Her family was the catalyst for the most important change in the Ageroi life cycle, and they were all lost in the accident. Without them, we could not Ascend.” The infinite sadness in her eyes sent shivers down Toshi’s spine. “Will you help us, child?”

             “Yes. If nothing else, I owe you…”

             The air above his head tore apart with a deafening boom and several of the Reaper monsters pushed through. One of them landed on top of him, tearing at his body with claws and fangs. The sounds of his screams propelled Toshi out of her momentary paralysis. She looked around for something to use as a weapon. All she could see were the glowing cubes in the brazier. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she heaved a handful at the creature, trying to strike its exposed abdomen.

             She connected. The monster left Jack to charge at her. She started to reach into the brazier again but the thing she had taken to be a sculpture was suddenly between them. Long streamers of… something… lashed at the monster. Smoke rose from wherever they touched. Looking around she realized there were several of the columns in the room, shredding and burning as they moved in an unearthly dance.

             She ran to Jack. He was curled up on his side. There were horrific tears in his chest and shoulders and an arm bone protruded from the flesh near his right elbow.

             “Hurts…”

             “Doctor!” Toshi screamed. “Doctor!”

             “Let me.” The Lady knelt on the other side and ran her hands over Jack’s body. As she reached his head, her fingers moved in an intricate pattern across his skull, and Jack seemed to fall into a deep sleep. “He’ll be fine, but better he sleeps for now.”

             She looked at the Doctor, who had come to stand behind Toshi. “Is everything with you always so complicated?”

             “Me?” he yelped. “You should try him!”

             “We will keep him with us as long as we can, then we will send him on. I can see his future and it is not with us.”

             “His future is in danger now, Lady, and we are no closer to knowing who is threatening it.”

             “Others know. Your task is different. You must take the… older one… to the place of testing.” She gave a snort at his uncomprehending look. “He must past the test of the Time Lords. He must look into the Vortex.”

             “Jack is familiar with the Vortex. He travels in it. He even sleeps with a version of it! What could a children’s test teach him?”

             “I do not know. I only know that if he fails the test, all of Time will end.”


	10. Chapter 10

            Jack awoke to the familiar scents of sandalwood and freshly-brewed coffee. Smiling, he snuggled into the fur… fur? He patted the bed. Instead of crisp Egyptian cotton, he encountered a thick, slightly scratchy pelt. He opened his eyes. Brown and cream fur with distinctive silver streaks covered the bed and draped down to the… deck?

             All right. Either he was hallucinating or his very naked body was lying on a ship’s bunk covered with a fferan lynx fur throw.

             Occam’s razor said he was hallucinating.

             Except that his life usually played by Torchwood rules, and the number one Torchwood rule categorically stated that if one heard hoof beats, one should expect a nostrovite-infected centaur, not a horse.

             He rolled onto his back to stare at a familiar curved ceiling. Overlapping plates were held together by an elaborate network of interlocking metal teeth.

             He was on a Chula warship.

             A very unusual one, he realized as he sat up to inspect the rest of the room. Chula design was at best pedestrian, but this baby had been put together with an eye to both efficiency and beauty. And luxury. He stretched, enjoying the warm air on his skin.

             Chula warships were notorious for wonky air circulating systems.

             So. Question number two. How had he gotten here?  Last thing he remembered was talking to Owen and Rhys… He grabbed at his elbow, palpating the bone and twisting and turning the joint. What the hell had happened?

             “Ianto? Ianto!”

             _*I’m here, Jack*_

_*Where?*_

_*Here. All around you*_

             It took him a few seconds to grasp the picture his partner placed in his mind. When he did, it snatched his breath away and left him one step from hysterics.

             _*You should have seen my reaction*_

_*Dear God, Ianto, how?*_

_*It was surprisingly easy, actually, once Teacher explained the process. It turns out a lot of the visualization exercises he had me doing weren’t just for translocation*_

_*But why would you do it?*_

_*We were talking to Owen, waiting for Rhys to come back with lunch, and you keeled over. You were in agony. Owen said you were reliving some horrible past trauma. Chaos was channeling the pain and shock from the incident into your mind. The only way to sever the link was to take you into the Vortex. Neither Chaos nor Order has power here*_

_*Dammit, Ianto, what were you thinking?*_

_*That I had to save your life or I was going to spend a hell of a lot of time as alone as you had! What, only Jack gets to be a hero?*_ Jack felt Ianto’s effort to throttle back his formidable temper. _*Cariad, there’s nothing you wouldn’t do to save someone you love. What makes you think the people who love you wouldn’t do the same for you?*_

 _*I wouldn’t… it’s just that…”_ He laughed bitterly. _*My past is a millstone around all your necks. Owen, Tosh, now you…*_

_*Your past makes you who you are. And I wouldn’t change it for the world*_

_*Throwing my words back at me, Mr. Jones?*_

_*Damn right*_

             Jack knew he was never going to win the argument. When it came to those he loved, Ianto had no sense of self-preservation. Continuing to argue would only result in an impressive explosion followed by hours, if not days, of chilly silence. He quickly decided it wasn’t worth it; not when they had bigger problems.

             _*So, Ianto… Is this change permanent?*_

 _*What?*_ His partner’s amusement was like a shot of adrenaline to Jack. _*No, you twpsyn, of course not. Why would you think that?*_

_*Well, excuse me, but I’ve only known two TARDIS and they had only one form!*_

_*Blame that on the Gallifreyans. Their sense of intellectual superiority wouldn’t allow them to consider a symbiotic relationship. Nethisi did, and nearly succeeded, but she was working with an adult TARDIS. It’s almost impossible to create true symbiosis with an adult*_

_*But your Potentiality implanted itself before you were born, so you developed together?*_

_*That implies we were separate. A Potentiality grafts itself to the brain, becomes part of it, preparing it for the possibility. There needs to be some sort of event to trigger it, or nothing happens. Most people with a Potentiality live and die with it and never know it, except for a penchant for maths, or chess. Nethisi triggered mine when she put Teacher around my wrist. My body coped because the Potentiality was an integral part of me and had prepared me *_

_*So you were a proto-TARDIS from birth*_

_*From the womb. Potentialities like very young brains. More plasticity*_

_*And you can choose to have another shape?*_

_*In this case, you chose the shape*_

_*Me?! How?*_

_*I panicked, trying to figure out what to be, other than a blue police call box. We were still linked. The image came from your mind*_

_*So I decided you would be a Chula warship?*_

_*I modified it, but yes*_

_*And when we go back, you will return to your body?*_

_*Yes*_

_*I’m glad to hear that. I would miss your human body*_

_*Would you?*_

Jack smiled his most lascivious smile. _*Oh, yeah*_

_*And what makes you think this body would be a liability in that department?*_

            Jack felt himself being pushed back into the fur throw by invisible hands. Soft puffs of warm air raised gooseflesh all over his body.

             _*Ianto…*_

_*Hush*_

             Jack arched as the invisible hands stroked his feet, caressing his arches. It was a little kink of his that Ianto had discovered early in their relationship, and he never failed to make use of it when he wanted Jack pliant. Thumbs made circles above each ankle then moved firmly upwards along his calves. Teeth nipped at the underside of each knee. Jack moaned.

             _*Did you say anything, my Captain?*_

             More strokes along the outside of his thighs, until the hands were cupping his arse. Floating in a pool of arousal, Jack threaded his fingers through the fur and released all control to his partner.

             _*Exactly as it should be*_

             Jack sighed as the warm air flowing over him turned into thousands of fiery little tongues licking everywhere at once. He was tasted, savoured, devoured, every opening in his body breached and his juices licked. He twisted and turned, settling down on his stomach -- trying to escape the delicious torture -- only to have a fiery blanket drape over his back as the invisible hands reached underneath to caress his erection. 

             Helplessly, he started to move. The fur rubbed his skin, leaving little red streaks. One of the hands moved lower down to rub his heavy sac. He choked back a scream as he bucked upwards, but couldn’t escape the touches that were driving him insane.

             He wondered what he would look like to an observer, writhing in passion in response to… nothing. The moment he thought about it, he saw it, the image flowing from his lover.

            _*You look beautiful. Hot and sweaty and beautiful*_

            Jack felt himself blush. He had no illusions about his looks, and no compunction about using them when he needed to, but Ianto’s appreciation could sometimes turn him back into an inexperienced teenager when he least expected it. And the damned man knew it and enjoyed his momentary confusion.

             _*What’s not to enjoy? I can make the intergalactic stud of all time weak at the knees*_ The sentence was punctuated with sharp nips all over Jack’s back and hips. _*He is mine, mine, mine*_

             _*Yes!*_ He turned, reaching out blindly. _*Oh, I want to touch you, feel you…!*_

             _*Come here. Join with me*_

The invitation resonated in every cell of Jack’s body, and he followed the sound of Ianto’s voice, opening himself to his lover’s mind. He felt the warm proto-validium shell that was Ianto’s body, and saw the marvelous beauty they had thought into being. He felt the hot, fiery energy that was Ianto’s essence enter him and he opened himself to receive it, offering all that he was in return. Their minds twinned and he felt his own passion in Ianto’s mind, and Ianto’s infinite need and desire in his, and heat caressed him inside and out as he exploded into orgasm and took Ianto along with him. 

             He came back into his own body, but stayed in the link. Warm air flowed over him, warming him as he sprawled on the fur, infinitely relaxed. Behind his eyes, great sheets of green-and-gold fire danced as that part of the Vortex that lived inside Ianto sung him to sleep. 

             The next thing he knew, someone was shaking him awake.

             _*Cariad, we must go. The Doctor and Toshi are back*_


	11. Chapter 11

         Of all the rooms she had visited in the TARDIS, the cloister garden was her favorite. Technically, she supposed it was a greenhouse; but with walls and ceiling programmed to create the illusion of a balmy fall afternoon in Gallifrey and bark mulch paths underfoot, it didn’t take a lot of imagination to think yourself outdoors. Uncle Jack had told her the room was one of the few that did not change, remaining stubbornly Gallifreyan, and that, while a number of Companions, including himself, loved to spend time there, the Doctor rarely visited. Gently stroking one of the petals of a deep orange flower that felt like velvet and smelled something like cinnamon, she thought she could understand why.

             “My own private genetic bank.”

             She buried her face in the bloom. “You move very quietly.”

             “When it suits me. That’s not the flower.”

             “What?”      

            “That’s not the flower. The sherea vine has a number of rather persistent predators, so it hides its reproductive organs.” He pushed aside some of the pale orange leaves to uncover a tiny three-petaled structure. “The pseudo-flower attracts the insects. They crawl towards the center looking for pollen, get trapped in the folds and die.”

            “Is that a warning, Doctor?” She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Because I have to tell you that it is generally acknowledged in my family that I inherited my mother’s penchant for beautiful, dangerous things.”

             “Your mother had the good sense to choose your father.”

             “Yes, but you see, I didn’t inherit her good sense.”

             “Toshi…”

             “Stop worrying, Doctor. You made it very clear how you felt about me not so long ago.”

             He touched her shoulder hesitantly. “Did I?”

             “Let’s see. Foolhardy, emotional, over-eager…”

             “Toshi.” He gripped her more strongly and turned her to face him. “You were what, nineteen? You scared me to death. You were beautiful, fresh, young, sexy… You reminded me of Rose, and I had lost her, twice. And then, there was Jack.”

             “I beg your pardon?”

             He laughed a carefree, happy sound she had never heard before. “You sounded like Queen Victoria for a moment. So, Jack. He and I, we’re… complicated. He’s my best friend, my creation; my… what does he call it? My muscle. And I was going to walk up to him and say _by the way, Jack, your adored little niece, the light of your eyes, well, I think she’s the sexiest thing in three galaxies and she keeps me up at night, so, do you mind if I ask her to come traveling with me?_ He would have knocked me into the next century!”

             “I’m twenty-five now and Uncle Jack is not naïve. So?”

             “So. When this is all over…” he cleared his throat. “Would you like to come traveling with me? I’d like to show you…oomph.”

             His next words were cut off as she threw himself at him and kissed him. He seemed startled for a moment, and then he wrapped his arms around her, lifting her off her feet as he returned the kiss enthusiastically. When their mouths finally parted, they stayed close, smiling foolishly at each other.

             “I’m out of practice at this,” he whispered.

             “Well, there’s nothing wrong with your technique,” she teased. “You’ll just have to practice more often.”

             He bit her earlobe then pressed stinging little bites along her throat. “Uh-huh. With you.”

             “Try it with anyone else and I’ll knock you into the next century myself.” She laced her fingers behind his neck. “Why don’t we start practicing right now?”

             He shook his head. “Can’t. We landed a minute ago. Right about now your mother is considering blasting open the doors to get you out.”

             Toshi blushed. “Oh. All right. We should go.”

             “Yeah.”

             “Should you put me down, then?”

             “Yeah.” He kept tasting her neck and jaw until, finally, she pushed him away and pointed in the general direction of the control room. “Yeah, sure, sorry.”

             They held hands all the way to the door. When it opened, they were faced with a crowd that included her parents, her brother, and assorted uncles and friends, plus a man who seemed familiar but she couldn’t place. They snatched their hands apart, looking for all the world like teenagers that got caught trying to sneak back into the house after an unapproved night out. Toshi plastered her best _hi Mom, I’m home!_ expression on her face and resolutely ignored her brother’s snickers.

             “Mom, where’s uncle Jack? We need to see him right now.”

             “Ianto had to take him into the Vortex.” Gwen answered her, but her narrowed eyes were on the Doctor. “He started to relive some sort of trauma.”

             “How in the name of Rassilon was Ianto able to…” The Doctor looked past her to the sitting area. “Oh, that is just brilliant!”

             He bounded away. Toshi looked over just in time to see the ghostly image of a spaceship fade away, leaving Uncle Jack and Uncle Ianto standing there with their arms around each other.

             “Wow,” she whispered to her brother, who had come to stand behind her. “Just…wow.”

             “Yeah. It’s been one damned thing after another around here.” He pointed at the man next to her mother. “Don’t forget to say hello to Uncle Owen.”

             Her jaw dropped half-way to the floor. “What? How?”

             “Come on. I think your Doctor and Uncle Jack…”

             “He’s not my Doctor,” she muttered.

             Yan gave her an impatient look. “He’s been your Doctor since you were ten. He just needed to catch up. Come on. Let’s go play secret service agent.”

             They followed the crowd to the sitting area, where the Doctor was firing questions at Ianto without either pausing for breath or waiting for answers. Finally, Jack clamped a hand over his mouth.

             “Doc, focus! The technical discussion can wait, ok? What happened in Ageros? Why did the Agency wipe my memory?”

             “Because in typical Jack fashion you didn’t follow orders. More to the point, we found out why you’re immortal.” He gave them a quick rundown of what they had learned in the Ageroi crèche. “So that’s what happened. When Rose brought you back, she thought you were human, but your cells still carry residual Ageroi energy. When your body died then was revived without the usual empathic input from the Ascent Circle, it assumed you were being forced into Ascending, and it protected you the best way it could.”

             “I’m Ageroi?”

             “Yes and no. To be exact, you’re an Ascent catalyst. The last of them, unless… Toshi,” the Doctor looked around until he found her, “remind me to go back to Ageros. Jack stayed with them for a while. We need to see if you have any relatives.”

             “And why,” Jack asked very, very softly, “does Toshi need to remind you of anything, Doc?”

             The Doctor turned bright crimson. “Well, you see…”

             Toshi started to blurt something but was silenced by her brother, who shook his head discreetly and mimed a _zip it_ gesture. She looked pleadingly at Uncle Ianto, who answered her with one of his quirky little grins.

             “Cariad,” he said, stroking Jack’s shoulder, “you can play the over-protective uncle later. We need to tell the Doctor what we’re up against. Doctor, this is Owen Harper. He’s an avatar of the White Guardian.”

             The Doctor grew quite still and his eyes went flat and chill. Suddenly he looked as dangerous as his reputation, and everyone was forcefully reminded that this was one of the most powerful beings in the Universe, someone who toppled empires and protected civilizations as routinely as they prepared breakfast. 

             “The Black Guardian.”

             Owen nodded. “Chaos is offended by Jack’s existence. It is trying to take advantage of the utter bollocks your friend Rose made of Jack’s time line when she brought him back. No offense, Doctor.”

             “None taken. It took me a long time to get over my own problems with it.”

             “Maybe that’s what the Lady meant,” Toshi said. “The Vortex test might be a way to untangle the mess.”

             “What Vortex test?” Jack asked.

             “The Gallifreyan test of passage.” The Doctor answered. “The Ageroi matriarch says I must take you to Gallifrey to undergo the ritual.”

             “The one where you look into the Vortex? The one that drove the Master mad?”

             “Yeah.”

             “I’m afraid I can’t allow that.” 

             The voice came from above them. On the stairs leading to the old greenhouse stood a slight white haired man in a smoking jacket and cravat. He had obviously seen better days: his eyes were dark pools in a shrunken face and his thin, greasy hair was plastered to his skull. His hands shook as if he had palsy. There was something desperate, almost hungry about the way he stared at Uncle Jack. 

             “Bilis Manger.” Jack grinned insolently. “You look a bit the worse for wear.”

               “If you knew, Captain, how many centuries of planning, how much effort, you have disrupted just by existing.” Manger almost smiled. “But I think it is time to end it.”

             He waved his arm. The concussive blast lifted most of them off their feet and scattered them like ninepins. Toshi, flat on her back, ears ringing, saw the rips appear in the air above them. The Reaper monsters were trying to crawl through, but balls of pure white energy pushed them back. Lifting her head, she saw doctor Harper standing over Uncle Jack, firing off ball after ball as fast as he could. Uncle Ianto stood in front of them, fending off Manger’s attacks, dampening the energy the old man was trying to produce.  Manger’s neck veins bulged with the effort, but his movements seemed tired and sluggish.

             She managed to crawl to her hands and knees and looked around for the Doctor. He had smashed head-first into the wall leading to the medical wing and slid down onto his stomach. He seemed unconscious, but Toshi noticed that his hands, hidden under his body, were working at something.  

             Suddenly she noticed something materializing behind and to one side of Uncle Ianto. A woman, a tall, dark woman partly encased in metal. Toshi had seen the pictures of the Torchwood One people the Cybermen had tried to convert. Manger was bringing Cybermen into the Hub!

             “Uncle Ianto, behind you!” she screamed at the top of her lungs.

             Her senses seemed to slow down as she watched him turn to face the metal monster. The look of utter horror and grief in his face shocked her. His hands dropped to his side. That was all the opening Manger needed. A single blast of energy hit Uncle Ianto on the chest and threw him against the metal column in the center of the fountain. He smashed into it like a rag doll and crashed into the water.


	12. Chapter 12

       “Ianto!”  
  
        Toshi watched in horror as the Captain threw himself after his partner only to be caught across the chest by the Cyberwoman’s metal-encased arm and flung back to land in a heap at doctor Harper’s feet. It was obvious he was still weak; worse, if the Cyberwoman's exoskeleton was even half-way operational, he had probably gotten a large surge of electricity aimed at disrupting his motor function. She had to assume he wasn't going to be any help on this one.  
  
         Without Uncle Ianto’s protection, Uncle Jack and doctor Harper they were open targets for Manger, and he didn’t miss the opportunity. A stream of dark energy pinned them in place. Doctor Harper was forced to divert most of his own energy to protect the Captain and himself. The two streams met with a hissing much like the sound of lava meeting the ocean. Over her head, Toshi could hear the sound of the Universe being ripped apart as the monsters tore their way through.  
  
        And that was all she could hear.   
  
        It didn’t make any sense. Torchwood Three should have been in full defense mode. The staff ran monthly drills using different invasion-of-the-Hub scenarios. At the very least the Rift monitors should have been howling from all the unusual energy bouncing through the place.  
  
        She struggled to her feet and looked around. She had landed closest to where Manger was, right by the greenhouse stairs. The Doctor and Yan were at the other end of the room, near the medical wing; the rest were back towards the new conference room.  
  
        She was the only one moving.  
  
        "Surprised, my dear? Did you think Chaos would leave so many enemies in the field, able to strike back?”  
  
         Toshi turned back towards Manger. The old man was pale and sweating, his natty façade disintegrating under the effort of keeping doctor Harper in check. Beyond him, the Cyberwoman stood almost at attention, more like a suit on armor on display than a living being. As Toshi studied her, an almost forgotten piece of Torchwood history came back to her.  
  
         “You are Lisa Hallett.”  
  
         The vacant eyes flickered.  
  
         “Your Uncle Ianto tried too, my dear. It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now. Chaos made sure of that.”  
  
         “She was under his control even then?”  
  
         “He plans ahead. Who better?”  
  
         An ear-splitting keen filled the space as one of the monster managed to get most of its body through the rip. The sound seemed to shake doctor Harper, and he wilted a little before pushing back against Manger again.   
  
         “At last.” Manger’s voice rang with satisfaction. “Miss Hallett, if you please, finish what you began. I will handle doctor Harper. The Dark Reapers are here for Captain Harkness. And you miss Cooper-Williams… I am sorry you are here. I am not a vicious man and I bear you no ill-will.”  
  
         While Manger talked, Toshi was looking around surreptitiously. The weapons locker was too far away, and in any case it was unlikely that there was anything there that would work against the monsters; all the larger weapons were downstairs in the armoury. She also knew she couldn’t win a fight against Lisa; the Cyberwoman had the advantage in both size and weaponry. Her only option was to create a distraction. If she threw Manger off his game even for one second, doctor Harper or Uncle Jack might have a chance.  
  
         As she started to drift into position, she caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye. Someone was on the catwalk leading to Myfanwy’s old nest. She didn’t dare look up. Deliberately, she bumped into Yan’s desk.  
  
         “Really, miss Cooper-Williams…”  
  
         “Are the mannerisms natural or are you impersonating an upper-class twit?” she prodded him in her best bratty voice. “Because either way you’re not as good as Rowan Atkinson.”  
  
         Red swept up from neck to forehead as Manger drew himself up. “You are not going to distract me, my dear. I am too old a hand to be tricked by a little thing like yourself.”  
  
         “You really like to hear yourself talk, Mr.Manger.” She grinned. “And speaking of distracted, have you noticed that your monsters don’t seem to be in any hurry to follow instructions?”  
  
         Manger looked around. Lisa knelt on the fountain catwalk. The Cyberwoman had dragged an unconscious Ianto up onto the metal grid and seemed to be examining him in detail. Overhead, the Dark Reaper circled the fountain column, seemingly disoriented. Manger’s frustrated snarl made Toshi giggle. Glaring at her, he reached into a pocket and pulled out an object and brought it to his lips.  
  
         “A dog whistle?” Toshi bent over laughing. “Your deadly monster can be controlled by a dog whistle?”  
  
         “I don’t think I shall be sorry to see you die at all, my dear. ”  
  
        He blew the whistle. The Dark Reaper answered with a loud cry, and then threw itself into a dive. Toshi reached for the paperweight Yan kept on his desk. It was made of sharp thin sheets of metal soldered to a heavy stone base. Uncle John had explained that it was part of the kind of disruptor mine used by hijackers to disable the freighters carrying basic supplies between settlements in the galactic border colonies. It wasn’t much, but if she could hit the Reaper in the exact spot where the fire had burned the one she had fought in Ageros she might buy doctor Harper the few seconds he needed.  
  
         She didn’t get to use it. As the Reaper reached the nest catwalk it seemed to bounce off an invisible barrier. Keening in rage, it rose up towards the ceiling then threw itself into a faster, steeper dive. The same thing happened as it reached the catwalk, but this time the force threw it against the brick wall. At the same time, a figure hurtled down from the shadows above to land squarely on the Cyberwoman’s shoulders, propelling them both into the water.   
  
        The disruption of his plans seemed to weaken Manger. His energy began to sputter as doctor Harper pressed him. Suddenly he threw himself backwards, aiming his energy at the space over their heads where some of the Reapers still struggled to break through.   
  
         “Toshi!”  
  
         The shout made her turn just in time to see the doctor’s sonic screwdriver hurtling at her head. She snapped it out of the air, aimed it at Manger and pressed the button. His body arched, spasming, as he faded from sight. Above him, the Reapers also faded as the tears in space and time healed as if they had never existed.  
  
         Suddenly things started happening all at once. The intrusion alarms blared out a belated warning as people launched into action as if fired from slingshots. Toshi decided that it was now safe to have a minor nervous breakdown. She made her way to the sitting area and collapsed onto one of the ottomans, holding her head in her hands and letting the tears flow.  
  
         “Are you alright?” The arms that stole around her and cradled her were already familiar. “My brave, talented, dangerous Toshiko.”  
  
         “How long?”  
  
         He seemed to understand the question. “Ten minutes.”  
  
        “Ten minutes?” To Toshi that seemed the funniest thing of all. “All this happened in ten minutes?”  
  
        “Amazing, isn't it?” He pulled her head up. “Look.”  
  
         She watched as Uncle Jack sat on the catwalk and dragged Uncle Ianto's body onto his lap. He leaned down and pressed their mouths together. Toshi was startled to see them start to glow. Behind them, Uncle John pulled himself out of the fountain, snorting water through his nose. He accepted doctor Harper's offered hand and let the doctor haul him upright.  
  
        "Toshi...”  
  
        She looked back to see her parents standing in front of her. “Mum, tad, I'm sorry, but I'm shaking too much to stand up and hug you properly.”  
  
        “You don't seem to be short on hugs,” her mother said acerbically, while at the same time reaching out and brushing her hand over Toshi's hair. “Doctor, how did you keep those things out of the Hub?”  
  
        "Me? I thought it was something you did, like that time bubble that kept the Daleks away.”  
  
         “It wasn't us.” Uncle John walked up to them, bare-chested and rubbing his hair with a towel. “It was mainframe. Come out to play, sweetie. Don't be shy.”   
  
         The hologram formed on the greenhouse steps. Toshi heard her mother's gasp and doctor Harper's strangled _whatthehell_ right before she realized what she was looking at. Rather, who she was looking at.   
  
         “Doctor...”  
  
        “Oh, no. You can't blame me. She was there already. All TARDIS did was to midwife the birth.”  
  
        The woman was slight, with delicate Asian features and a sweet smile. She was wearing an outfit Toshi would have cheerfully fought a crowd of bargain shoppers for, and the highest heels she had ever seen. Her blue-black hair was up in an elaborate chignon.   
  
        Toshi watched her mother stumble forward. “Toshiko...”  
  
        “Not quite, but yes. Hello Gwen. You look good. Rhys, hi. Owen, it's so nice to see you.”  
  
        “Tosh, how?”  
  
        “You know I was experimenting with the mainframe, right? It got a little out of hand.” She glided over to the catwalk. “Hey, Jack. Ianto. Is it me, or is this kind of familiar?”  
  
         Toshi couldn't help but notice that neither of the men seemed very surprised, although they were a little teary-eyed. Her mum, Tad, and doctor Harper joined them, and they stood close together, whispering.  
  
         “It's starting to feel like a superhero convention around here,” Andy appeared with a tray full of glasses and mugs. “So, John, how did you know to keep away from the main floor?”  
  
         “I had a visit from doctor Harper's boss. He signed me to a short-term contract.” He grabbed a mug and swallowed about half the contents at one gulp. “Damn, that water was cold. So what's next, doctor?”  
  
        “Next, we take Jack to Gallifrey.”  
  
        “I heard Jack say something about Saxon going mad from it.”  
  
        “Yes. It's... hard, staring into the Vortex. Some minds can't handle them.” He sighed, dropped his chin on top of Toshi's head. “I think Jack can handle it."  
  
         Andy offered him a mug of tea. “Whistling past the graveyard, Doctor?”  
  
        “For all I'm worth, Andy. Losing Jack... I can't bear to think about it.”  
  
        “But there's a chance.”  
  
         The Doctor stared into the depths of the mug as if trying to read the future in the tea leaves. "Yes, Andy. There is."


	13. Chapter 13

             The testing ground was a bowl-shaped depression between two hills, too small to be called a valley. A simple amphitheater had been carved out of the black rock. The entrance was guarded by two roughly-hewn pillars. In the center of what would have been the stage, a large black stone torus rested atop an orange-red faceted pillar.

             Toshi watched as the Doctor lit the four torches that flanked the bowl. Behind him, the suns of Gallifrey were setting, and long shadows had started to creep across the valley floor.  A soft hum filled the air as the torches caught and burst into flame.

             “I expected something grander,” she whispered to her uncles. “More Time-Lordish, I guess.”

             “And attract attention to it?” Uncle Ianto shook his head. “Most Gallifreyans never knew its location. They were brought here in the dark and left in the dark. Even members of the government weren’t told. Besides, what could you do to it that was more impressive than what it is?”

             “I guess so.”

             Uncles Jack put his arm around her shoulders. “You sound grumpy, limpet.”

             The unexpected childhood nickname made Toshi want to bawl. She wanted to find a way to protect him. She remembered something  Aunt Martha had told her once: the Vortex had driven the Time Lord who called himself the Master insane. And there was nothing she could do. She contented herself with putting her arms around him and burrowing in, resting her head against his chest and sighing as she felt him wrap the coat around her.

              “Silly limpet. Everything will be fine. You’ll see.”

             She nodded. He had said something much like it to her mother back in the Hub, and to Aunt Martha when she had called from London. The two women had forcefully expressed their displeasure at being told to stay home, as had Uncle John, but the Captain had pointed out that if something went wrong and he and Ianto did not return, Torchwood would need leadership to keep it from sliding back into what it had been before Canary Wharf.

            “Gwen, Martha, you two are the only ones with the moral authority, not to mention the allies, to keep the militarists and the xenophobes under control. On the other hand, John has the ruthlessness to get things done when the gentle arts of persuasion and blackmail fail.” The two men exchanged a grin that gave everyone a glimpse of the hell raisers they must have been once. “Trust me on this, guys. Torchwood has to get things right. Besides, with a dashing hero like me on the case, how can we fail?”

             They had given in with much grumbling. Then the Captain turned his attention to Toshi.

             “The one thing Torchwood cannot afford is to have its leader so distracted by grief that she’s not effective. You will stay here and wait. I will make you a promise. Either all of us come back or he will. By himself.”

             “Jack!” the Doctor protested gently.

             “It’s not sentiment, Doc. Or at least, nor much. If Ianto and I don’t come back that will leave just you and your TARDIS,” he looked around, “and a few possibilities. They’re going to need all the help they can get, and that’s your job. It always has been.”

             Much to her chagrin, Toshi couldn’t find a single flaw in his argument. She resigned herself to staying behind.

             “Ah… Jack…” Doctor Harper had that familiar I-have-to-tell-the-Captain-something-he-won’t-want-to-hear look. “My boss says you need to rethink that assumption.”

             “Which one?”  

             “The one about leaving Toshi behind.”

             The Captain did not even attempt to hide his displeasure. “Why?”

             “Whoah. Don't shoot the messenger.” Doctor Harper made warding off gestures. “I've been arguing with It about this, but... no joy. Order requires symmetry. There were four of you at the Game Station; there have to be four on the testing ground. The Time Lord, the TARDIS, the Companion, and you.”

             “Does that mean Ianto has to stay behind?”

             “Don't even think about it,” his partner growled.

             “No, he has to go, and so do I.”

             “Owen,” the Captain said with exaggerated patience, “are all the dead this cryptic or is this part of the new job?”

             “Nasty, Jack. No. I'm trying to very hard to keep from generating any paradoxes, so I have to be very careful.” He took a deep breath. “I have to be there because I am an avatar of Order. Ianto has to be there because he is an avatar of Time.”

             “I am _what?”_

             “Wake up and smell the coffee, Tea-Boy. That's what a TARDIS is. A manifestation of the Vortex. A creature of Time.”

             The Doctor looked up from the monitor he had been scrutinizing. “So if the avatars of Order and Time have to be there, an avatar of Chaos must also be present. Do you know who it is?”

             “Up to a couple of hours ago, I would have said Manger, but after the way he screwed up, I don't know. Chaos is extremely harsh with failure.”

             “I can bear Manger's discomfort just fine.” Andy Davidson appeared seemingly out of nowhere, carrying several large stainless steel flasks. “Coffee? No offense, Doctor, but I've tasted the sludge TARDIS makes. I've made you some strong tea.”

             “Thank you, Andy.”

             The trip had been short, but the Doctor had been incredibly fussy about the landing. He had muttered about _occlusions_ , and _vectorless landings,_ and _hyperdimensional stabilization_ until the Captain threatened to lock him in the cloister and take over. Toshi had caught a few rebellious comments from TARDIS, too, but the Doctor would not relent until it was all to his satisfaction.

             Now it was all in place.  Toshi watched the Doctor coming towards them, holding  a torch, looking very much like what he was, one of the most powerful members of one of the most powerful races in the Universe. It wasn't a side of himself he showed often, and she had learned that when he did, wonderful and terrible things could happen. She just didn't know which one it would be this time. She wondered if he did himself.

             “It's ready.”

             Toshi dropped her arms. Uncle Jack kissed the top of her head and pushed her gently towards his partner. “Doc, why were you so fussy about this landing?”

             The Time Lord looked a bit sheepish. “Superstition.” He smiled at all the gobsmacked faces around him. “What? You didn't think I would try a little leverage? Time, Order, and Chaos are all very important, but give me Chance every time. And she needs to be propitiated.”

             “How?”

             “Last night, two schoolboys, best friends, looked into the Untempered Schism. Neither one of them was strong enough. One ran away, and one went mad. I lost the best friend of my childhood last night.”  He smiled at Jack. “I'm giving Chance some symmetry of her own. I'm hoping the best friend of my adulthood is inspired.”

             The Captain's face lit up. “Let's go, then.  In my experience, Chance hates to be kept waiting.”

             They followed him into the auditorium. As she reached the pillar, Toshi realized that the torus floated above it. A soft glow spilled out across the black stone and washed down the pillar. What she had thought was orange-red stone was actually faceted crystal that reflected the light. At the base of the pillar was a small metal tablet with some High Gallifreyan writing on it. 

             “So where do I stand? Is there any sort of special ceremony?”

             “You stand right in front of it. And no, there's no ceremony. Just... look.”

             The Captain looked over at Uncle Ianto. Some communication passed between them – Toshi had gotten used to that intense look that excluded everyone else – then he stepped up to the pillar.

             “Don't.” A middle-aged man came out of the shadows. “Please.”

             “Dad?”

             “Don't do this, son.” Tears ran down the man's cheeks. “If you stop now, your brother has a chance. There'll be a cure someday and he'll be fine and you can be together.”

             “Dad...”

             “You've failed Gray twice, son. But you can still make it better. Don't do this. Please.”

             The man tried to touch the Captain. Uncle Ianto and Doctor Harper stepped in front of the Captain and blocked his way. The man lunged, trying to reach past them. Doctor Harper grabbed his wrist. The touch seemed to send an electric charge through him, and he twisted away. As he did the disguise fell away. In place of a middle-aged man with the tanned, rough skin of a desert dweller there was an old man with craggy features and spiky black hair wearing a black robe with a fur collar.

             “The Black Guardian.” The Doctor came as close to snarling as Toshi had ever heard. “Nothing much changes, does it? Even that rat fur around your neck is still the same.”

             “Be silent!”

             “You’ve overreached again, old boy. And so stupidly. Jack? It’s time.”

             “No! Wait! Listen to me for a moment.” The old man reached an entreating hand towards the Captain. “You don’t need to do this. What scares you the most, Captain Harkness? What do you hate and fear the most? I can make it go away. Loneliness, death… This pretty little girl here, she will grow old and die and her children and grandchildren will grow old and die. I can make her live forever Captain. I can make all your loved ones live forever. You can have them with you, all of them.”

             The Captain smiled at Toshi. “So, limpet, want to live forever?”

             “Does it include a young and beautiful clause?”

             The Black Guardian nodded. “If you want it to.”

             “Then thanks but no thanks. Boring.” She took the Captain’s hand and pulled him towards the torus. “Come on, Uncle Jack. Let’s do this and go home.”

             “It’s not going to be that easy.” The Black Guardian said. “The Vortex will still make you choose, and you won’t know which choice leads to what future. You could make a terrible mistake. You could wipe out your whole little family back in Cardiff. Can you live with that, Captain Harkness? So many have died because of you, can you live with killing more?”

             The Captain seemed to falter, then Uncle Ianto was there, taking him by the shoulders. “Cariad. I trust you.”

             “What if…”

             “No. No doubts. Even at your worst, you never wanted power for yourself. You always believed you were working to protect something worth protecting. And you have come such a long way since then. You will make the right choice because you’re you.” 


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Those of you who enjoy classic fantasy and science fiction will of course recognize the homage to Ursula Le Guin’s _The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas_. With my own chosen solution because hers (arrogant of me) left me unhappy.

           Jack stepped up to the torus. In spite of Ianto’s words, he was feeling uncharacteristically uncertain. The old him would have jumped at the chance, certain that the Gods loved him, egotistical ass that he was. The new him, who understood the concept of hostages to fortune, knew that the Gods could love you and still beat you bloody. He looked at the Black Guardian, raging impotently in the shadows beyond the torches. At least that particular threat was contained for now.

             He examined the stone. It seemed impossibly smooth and warm to the touch. As he stroked it, the empty center began to glow. Gripping the edges, he leaned into the light.

             It was beautiful. It was terrifying. It was awful, in the old sense: awe-full. He had traveled in the Vortex to the end of the Universe and back, and, if Owen was right, he shared his life and bed with one of its avatars. When Rose had brought him back to life, she had flooded him with enough Vortex energy to activate the residual Ageroi energy in his cells – the Ageroi, whose Ascended form was pure energy. Before he had even been conceived, the Vortex had been integral to his existence.

             But this was different. The Time Lords called this the Untempered Schism, where the fabric of the Universe was ripped apart and the magnificent transcendence that was the Vortex was visible in its entirety. In this place, knowing the Unknowable was forced on you with a pitiless disregard for the limitations of your senses; no wonder people went mad.

             

_And suddenly he stood in a promontory above a city so beautiful it put all others to shame. Its graceful crystal towers soared about dazzling white walls. Embroidered banners and hangings provided elegance and colour. Gardens lined the river banks, swayed on rooftops, and cascaded down the walls. This city cast a shadow on all the cities of the Universe._

_“This is T’zirah.”_

_He turned and saw Her and knew Her. He bowed formally in the High Style. The Guardian of Time smiled at him impishly. “So formal, my Captain?”_

_“It seemed appropriate.” He shrugged, turning back to the city. “What did you call it?”_

_“It has many names: Lakh’eloi, Death Knell, Omelas. In your childhood culture, it is T’zirah.”_

_He translated it in his head: the Place of Choosing. It was part of the Cautionary Tales. A beautiful, perfect city built on the misery of a single child, and of the choice each of its citizens had to make. “So this is a fiction?”_

_“Call it a moral construct. I place it in the hardwired subconscious of every race that shows promise of civilization. It raises the ultimate question.”_

_Below, one of the city gates opened and a couple emerged. They both carried backpacks and were hurrying away without a backwards look._

_“They chose.”_

_“Indeed. That one,” She pointed, “will become a great healer and teacher. The other will be a martyr and saint that will inspire the birth of a great civilization. It is always the same. Those who walk away carry great beauty with them. They have made a moral choice and the Universe rewards them. And yet…”_

_“And yet?”_

_“The child still suffers.”_

_Jack’s whole body shook as he realized what his choice would have to be. “Look,” he said desperately, “I’m supposed to have two futures, right?”_

_“Indeed.”_

_“Then I can’t make this choice by myself. It would be only half an answer!”_

_With a smile that old him she saw right through his subterfuge without difficulty, she placed a hand on his shoulder. “Perhaps it would be instructive at that.”_

     

            He materialized in a great marble room, obviously some kind of meeting chamber. Something terrible had happened – there were corpses in some of the seats – but Jack’s attention was riveted on the two beings at the far end. The giant head in a jar could have been human at one time, even with fleshy tentacles where its hair and neck would have been; it was rather compelling in an alien sort of way. Standing next to it, a human-sized bipedal feline in an old-fashioned nursing sister uniform smiled gently in welcome.

             “Captain Harkness. I am the Novice Hame, and this is the Face of Boe.”

             “Nice to meet you… what did you say?”

             She grinned widely, showing fangs. “I said, this is the Face of Boe.”

             Jack walked forward very slowly until he was… body to face… with the giant head. At the same slow pace he made a wide circle around the jar, noticing the hoses and power cables running from it to the control panel beyond.

             “Ianto would freak.”

             The soft chuckle resonating in his mind was very familiar. “Oh, no. Unless your Ianto is very different from mine, I suspect he would just sigh and set about learning to maintain the equipment.”

             They laughed in agreement. Jack placed a hand on the glass. “Do you miss him?”

             “Every day. I miss them all every day of my life.”

             “So… what happened?”

             “Train accident?” The wry riposte made Jack snort. “It’s complicated. Let’s just say catastrophic evolution and leave it at that. So… what can the Face of Boe do for Captain Jack Harkness?”

             “We… I… have to make a choice.” He sat cross-legged on the floor and told his other self the story. At one point he accepted a glass of water from Novice Hame to ease his parched throat. When he finished, he waited quietly, examining the giant face on the other side of the glass.

             “He fascinates you.” The cat nurse came to crouch down next to him.

             “I’m my own greatest fan, Novice Hame. Didn’t you know?”

            She sighed. “Now I really believe what She told us. He’s very good at deflection, too.”

             “Now, Hame.” The voice was amused. “Jack, I have no answers for you. We made that decision back in Boeshane when we were kids, but when I look back on my life I see so many mistakes. Just because I am ancient doesn’t mean I am wise, in spite of what people think.”

             “If I may,” Novice Hame said diffidently. “When I was assigned to care for the Face of Boe, I studied his life. After a while I noticed something. Boe may not always be wise, but he does have an inexhaustible capacity to love. His greatest successes come when he leads with his heart.”

             “That does not mean it won’t hurt.” Jack got to his feet. “That’s my answer, then, and may God have mercy on me. Thank you, Novice Hame.” He took one of her paws and raised it to his lips. “If you ever need me, send word.”

             “Jack!” the Face of Boe mocked him gently.

             Jack grinned his lady-killer grin. “What? I was just saying goodbye!”

             “Good bye, Jack. Say hello to the Doctor for me.”

             Jack gave a shout of laughter. “I should have known.”

 

 

_The door was the first ugly thing Jack had ever seen in the city. Made of  thick rough wood bound with iron bands, it looked like it belonged in a medieval dungeon. As it swung open, the stench made him retch. The room beyond was in total darkness. As he stepped in a weak light began to glow, as if the sunrise outside had managed to penetrate the stone. Jack looked around and had to bite down hard to keep from vomiting._

_The floor was covered knee deep in the refuse of centuries: rotted food, vomit, urine and feces, dead rats, and things he didn’t want to look at too closely. The child cowered in a corner, whimpering and babbling to itself. He was so emaciated Jack could see his internal organs through his skin. He was covered in scabs and suppurating sores. Jack couldn’t tell the color of his hair or the shade of his skin for the centuries of dirt caked on._

_And yet, the child reached for him. As Jack bent over to pick him up, he wrapped his arms around Jack’s neck and hung on. Jack cuddled him against his chest, unmindful of the stench and dirt on his clothes. The child burrowed in, reminding Jack of Toshi, and a towering rage filled him._

_As he left the room, he heard the great bells of the city ringing an alarum. People were running about aimlessly – the perfect city had never needed soldiers – and those who crossed his path slunk away in terror when they looked into his face. He supposed he must have looked like vengeance come calling, but he didn’t care. His fury at the centuries-long suffering of the little bag of bones in his arms made glass shatter and wood splinter as he passed; tapestries burst into flames when they brushed against him._

_He stepped out into one of the rooftop gardens. Roses grew in elegant pots around a central fountain. Several young women cowered against the parapets. A single look sent them running, screaming in panic as the towers above started to shake. Picking up one of their discarded veils, he sat down on the rim of the crystal fountain. He dipped the veil in the cool scented water and wiped the child’s face with it. The boy smiled and hung on to the soft gentleness. Jack wet the other end and wiped some more. The boy made joyful sounds more like kitten meows than human cries, and rubbed his face against Jack’s chest._

_At some point he realized tears were running down his face. The boy was dying. In many ways the boy was the city and the city was the boy and their futures were bound together. So be it. Jack sat there, in the rose-scented sunrise, holding his charge, until the boy breathed his last breath and the city collapsed into dust around them._

 

 

            “Hold him!” Owen shouted as Jack shook from the effort of trying to contain the Vortex inside himself _._ “You need to ground him, or he’ll fly apart!”

             Jack watched helplessly as Ianto and the Doctor grabbed his hands and hung on. He tried to tell them to leave, but words would not come. So much power poured through him that it took everything in him to hold on to it. If he released it all at once Gallifrey would shatter from the explosion. Across from them, Owen hung on to Toshi, who was struggling to launch herself into the middle of things.

             “Cariad.” Ianto’s voice reached him as if from a great distance. “Release it through us, slowly. We can guide it.”

             “No.” He forced the words out. “We don’t know what it will do.”

             “Yes, we do. Listen, cariad. The Face of Boe needs the energy to complete his transformation, and it needs to come from you. Right now. TARDIS and I can guide it to him.”

             “Backwash…”

              Ianto grinned impishly. “The Doctor can use a few extra regenerations, can’t he? Come on, Cariad. Time doesn’t wait for many.”  

             Ianto placed his hand inside the torus.  Jack fed the energy through him as slowly as he could. Some of it escaped back into the Doctor, who swayed with the impact but hung on. From the shadows came a howl of rage and loss as the Black Guardian was forced back into the void.

             It seemed to take forever, but finally the last of the fire left his bloodstream. He collapsed into Ianto’s arms. The Doctor held them both tenderly, guiding them to the ground. Toshi and Owen ran up. Toshi threw herself at the Doctor, not quite yet knowing whether to laugh or cry. He wrapped his arms around her and hung on for dear life. Owen rocked back and forth, looking mightily pleased with himself.  
  


            “Owen?” Jack raised his head from Ianto’s lap. “Now what?”

             “Now you go back home and keep on going, Jack. You know, the twenty-first century is when it all changes, blah, blah, blah…”

             “And you?” 

             “Oh, I’ve got tons to see to. You wouldn’t believe how long you lot and your descendants are going to live if I told you.”

             Jack and Ianto managed to stand up and pull their friend into a three-way hug. Finally, the doctor pushed them away.

             “Enough of that. Time for me to head out.” As he started to fade, they could hear his shout. “Oi! No reckless foolishness! It’s not fair to a hard-working guardian angel!”

             Jack waited until Owen had disappeared completely, then he turned to the embracing couple standing behind him. “Doc?”

             “Yes, Jack?”

             “I think you, Ianto, and I need to have a long talk. You’re going to need some pointers. Otherwise, Gwen is going to wipe the floor with you when you and Toshi tell her your plans!"


End file.
